


Northern Lights

by silver_sun



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch, Shetland (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, Peter POV, Peter and nightingale need to talk about things but aren't very good at it, Trows which are little mischievous trolls in Shetland mythology, Up Hella Aa, crossover fic, no knowledge of Shetland required
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-04
Updated: 2014-11-24
Packaged: 2018-02-16 04:15:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 48,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2255538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_sun/pseuds/silver_sun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary:  The theft of three Pictish stone carvings from a museum in London lead Peter and Nightingale to Shetland. The reason for the theft is clear: The stones are ancient storage devices for magical energy. Who took them and why is a lot less so.  That Shetland has its own mythology and magics which are far closer to that of Scandinavia than London doesn't help matters.<br/>Between the lack of information, the cold and wet January weather and Nightingale's cold, Peter can't help but wish they were back in London. </p><p> </p><p>Crossover with Shetland.   No knowledge of Shetland, which is a police drama set in Shetland, is needed. The story is from Peter's POV, and any information about the three detectives, DCI Jimmy Perez, DS Alison 'Tosh' McIntosh and DC Sandy Wilson, who make up the core cast of Shetland will be found out where needed as Peter does.  </p><p>Set post Broken Homes for Rivers of London and after series one of Shetland.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Why anybody would want to steal a couple of rocks from a museum and then leg it to the far north of Scotland was beyond me. Why they'd choose to do it in January when it was pissing it down with rain and blowing a gale was even more baffling. But they had and that was why I was sitting in what passed for a departure lounge in Aberdeen's ferry terminal.

The three rocks, which were knobbly carved balls of sandstone about the size of a tennis ball, apparently had ritual significance. Which is the go to phrase for archaeologists say when they mean they don't have a clue what they are, but they're not admitting it for anything. I've watched Time Team enough times to know that much. The fact the rocks were rare Pictish carvings wasn't really a good enough reason for us to be heading to the other end of the country looking for them. If it had just been theft we, the Met, would have passed it on to our colleagues north of the border once we had realised the rocks had reached Scotland and thought good riddance. Spending time and money looking for something that was worthless to everybody bar a few academics who specialised in Prehistoric Shetland just wasn't how the commissioners rolled when came to allocating the increasingly tight budget.

Unfortunately for us the rocks weren't just rocks. They were magical rocks, which was why we were trying to get to the arse end of nowhere in some of the worse weather I'd ever seen. How did we know they were? Nightingale had once visited the museum in question and felt the vestigia about them. I didn't ask how long ago, but I was betting on it being decades as he was kind of vague about it. My first question, as all good coppers and wizards apprentices should start by asking as many of them possible, was how did the rocks still have vestigia about them so long after they were made?

Nightingale had looked less than happy when he'd admitted that he didn't actually have a good answer, although storage of magic was a distinct possibility. Sort of like pocket sized prehistoric magical batteries, I'd said and then here had been an awkward moment as we thought about the all too recent craptastic events that had happened at the Skygarden. He'd then excused himself without giving me any other information. He'd reappeared half an hour later, looking if not happier then at least determined, and asked me if I had any plans for the weekend. I hadn't occurred to me at that point that saying no would lead to us ending up on a ship in the North Sea. Admittedly at that point neither had Nightingale. He'd been planning on flying up there.

The reason for the quick departure was that it had taken a week since the initial robbery for the case and its lack of information to come our way. So we'd left the Folly with overnight bags and taken a flight from the City of London airport up to Aberdeen. It's had been kind of fun seeing London from the air. I'd not been on a plane that small before either. In fact the only other one I'd been on was when a load of us who'd been in training at Hendon had gone to Ibiza for three days. I did wonder why we were in such a hurry to get there when we didn't have the faintest idea why the rocks had been nicked in the first place. Nightingale had then pointed out that flying wasn't much more expensive once you factored in the petrol costs of driving to Aberdeen in the Jag and then parking it at the airport before paying for a flight out to Shetland.

The weather in London hadn't been too bad. Cold, damp and grey, but that was expected at the end of January. Landing in Aberdeen had been an experience that I was keen never to repeat. The little plane had felt like it was being shaken as thoroughly as the rat Toby had cornered round by the bins a couple of days ago. To say I hadn't been looking forward to getting on another tiny plane was an understatement. So I was kind of relieved when it was announced that the flights out to Sumburgh Airport, which was where we'd been due to fly to, were all cancelled for the day.

Something minor like no planes and a near hurricane blowing outside wasn't enough to deter Nightingale. I'm not convinced that anything less than a full scale nuclear war would put him off once he'd decided to do something. So I was stuck minding the bags and wondering whether we were heading back to London or if we were going to stay overnight in Aberdeen and fly out in the morning, while Nightingale pursued what I believed was the very unlikely idea of being able to get tickets for the ferry.

I suspected Seawoll and Stephanopolous would be celebrating the fact that they were getting a few weirdness free days while we were away. At least I hoped they'd be weirdness free as it wasn't like there was anybody else who could deal with it until we got back.

Our mysterious magical rock thief had left London and caught a coach for Aberdeen before getting the ferry five days ago. The biggest problem that we'd got was that was nearly all we had to go on. We did have a grainy CCTV image of our rock thief and the almost certainly fake name he'd used to book his ferry tickets to Shetland under. I mean who goes round with a name like Gavra Trolhoulland? I mean unless you were bit part in something like Games of Thrones. We'd drawn a blank about finding out anything else about him. Not registered to vote. Paid his landlord cash in advance. No driving licence. No past convictions and I was willing to bet that there would be no passport either. Trolhoulland, at least under that name, didn't seem to exist.

We'd checked out his flat a few hours before we left the City of London airport, just in case there was something that we could pick up that hadn't found its way onto the HOLMES database, like where he was going to in Shetland, such as a hotel reservation or something. His flat had been a complete bust. It had been sparsely furnished and everything about it said temporary accommodation. He certainly hadn't looked like he was ever planning on coming back to it. Which was always worrying when they had access to magical objects which still had power stored in them more than a thousand years after they were made.

The Shetland Constabulary had wanted a reason why a senior officer from the Met was going to be poking around their island. So at the moment our utterly unlikely cover story was that it was some Scottish independence nut who had stolen them because he didn't didn't want the English to have them. I wasn't sure anybody was going to buy it, I sure as hell didn't. There was always the possibly that we were actually partially right and the guy really was a total loon and though he could use magic to make Scotland a separate country again. Which was pretty worrying really, magic and cause they were willing to break the law for sounded like a bad combination.

There wasn't much I could do to further our investigation at the Aberdeen ferry terminal, so to pass the time I looked at the weather forecast, which was awful and the pictures and leaflets that had obviously been provided to stop the passengers dying of boredom while they wait to board their ship. The one about dolphins had been interesting, while the one about famous shipwrecks in the area seemed sort of in bad taste.

I wasn't looking forward to getting on the St Clair, assuming Nightingale could get us tickets. The journey hadn't sounded too bad when I'd been at the Folly. It was only one hundred and twenty-five miles out to Shetland once we'd got to Scotland, that was like going from London to Liverpool. Only London to Liverpool had seventy mile an hour motorways and in the Jag it would have been a sweet drive once we'd left the M25. Aberdeen to Lerwick on the other hand was not a sweet anything. It was twelve hours of rough seas in a ship that had, according to the little bit of information that was under a framed print of the St Clair, once been used for Dover-Calais daytrip crossings. That was before it got too tatty and was relegated to being battered by the worst the North Sea could throw at it.

"We're in luck," Nightingale said with far more enthusiam than I currently had, as he walked briskly over to me. "There was a cancellation for the six o'clock sailing this evening. I've booked us a cabin."

"I wonder why?" I said. It wasn't a question, not even close. Everybody else had more sense than to get into a boat while the weather forecast looked like it auditioning for a part in Noah's Arc. I tried to tell myself that the captain of the St Clair, whoever he or she was, knew exactly what they were doing and they wouldn't sail if they thought they couldn't get us all there safely.

"A change of plan?" Nightingale said sounding a little bit irritated. "I don't know why you expect me to know the answer to things like that."

I sighed and picked up the bags. Things had been like this lately, since the Skygarden, snappy and tense. The Folly didn't feel right without Lesley there and Varvara staying for a while hadn't helped. She'd left now. Where to I had no idea, but I trusted Nightingale when he said that she wouldn't be causing us any more problems. It sounded bad, but if he'd wanted to kill her he'd have done it, not invited her back to the Folly for nearly a month. Nightingale might be ruthless about some things, but I still found the idea premeditated murder unlikely.

 

Sailing wasn't as bad as I had thought it would be. It wasn't great, but it wasn't any worse than the rides at Southend-on-Sea's pleasure beach. Or at least it wasn't until we'd left the safety of Aberdeen harbour and headed out into open water. It was too dark to see just how high the waves were, but not being able to see them did very little to stop me feeling ill. I don't think I'd ever been travel sick up to that point and I sincerely hoped that I wouldn't ever have to suffer it again it future.

Some of the passengers, who apparently had far stronger stomachs than either of us, were sitting drinking in the bar or eating whatever it was that was on the menu for the evening meal. The smell of food was currently too much to handle and after half heartedly suggesting to Nightingale that maybe food might make us feel better, we beat a hasty retreat to our cabin.

I'm not entirely sure whether our cabin had once started life as a cupboard. It certainly had the right dimensions for it. The cabin was also stiflingly hot and had no windows or as far as I could tell any air conditioning. Everything appeared to be made of off-white plastic and the beds, which were recessed into the wall, had what appeared to be a seatbelt across them. The single fluorescent tube light in the ceiling completed the super budget look. I supposed to should have been grateful it hadn't been designed by Easyjet or it would have been like being inside a orange.

Whoever had designed the beds had done so with the thought that occupants would do anything other that sleep in it, as the lack of space over them actually prevented you from sitting up to read, unless you were about four foot tall. Perhaps those thoughtless designers had been onto something, I decided once I found that lying down helped a bit. I plugged my headphones into my phone and hoped that if I was really lucky I could convince myself that I was in a particularly rocking club.

It wasn't a resounding success, but I wasn't alone in my miserable seasick state. Nightingale was definitely feeling it too. Pale and sweating, he was lying fully dressed on his bunk with his eyes closed, trying like me not to move any more than he had to.

"Peter, are you awake?" I heard hear him say after we had been in the cabin for a couple of hours. Rolling over, I tried not to think about how the room continued to move after I'd stopped. "Unfortunately," I replied.

"I believe I may have made an error in choosing to catch the ferry."

Well duh, was my first thought, which was rapidly replaced with 'wow, he must be feeling rough if he's admitting he got it wrong.' Which of course now meant I was going spend the rest of the journey worrying about him. At least it was a distraction from the fact my stomach seemed determined to lurch in the opposite direction to the way the ship was rolling.

"I could read the case notes," I suggested. Not that I felt like looking at words wobbling about on a page in front of me, but he sounded worse than I felt and that was saying something.

"The sea was much calmer last time I was here," Nightingale said seeming not to have heard me. "Although I was under it at the time so perhaps that had something to do with it.

“In a submarine?” I asked. Then realising how stupid that sounded. I mean how else would he have been under the North Sea? I added, "Was that during the war?”

"Yes. I was to make contact with a group of Norwegian practitioners who'd formed their own resistance cell. It went well and I returned to Britain a month later. Don't look so surprised, Peter. Not everything I do culminates in abject failure."

I didn't think I'd looked surprised at all and I had never thought he was failure, far from it. He'd been incredibly hard on himself since Lesley had so dramatically switched sides. I knew he couldn't understand how he'd missed Lesley progressing with her studies faster than she should have been or how he'd not realised that there was a hint of another master's signare in how she constructed her formae. If I'd wanted to be horrible to him I'd have asked the same thing. How, with all the experience he had, could he have missed it? I didn't want to be horrible to him, he didn't deserve it and I hated to see how much he blamed himself over it. Losing an apprentice had apparently been a really big deal back in the day and I knew he wouldn't be getting over Lesley ditching us in favour of Faceless any sooner than I would.

What he had done was step up my training. As soon as he'd been sure I'd suffered no permanent harm from being tasered, we'd started work on as many offensive and defensive formae as he safely get me to do each day. As a result most of the time I was too knackered at the end of the day to dwell on what had happened with Lesley, which I think was as much part of his plan as making sure I was able to defend myself. We slowed down a bit in the last couple weeks or so, first because I'd had a cold and sneezing while using magic to explode things tends to make the wrong thing go kaboom. Then because he'd caught it from me. I'd still had to practice down on the firing range, while he coughed and sneezed and generally looked like he should have been in bed. He'd mostly shifted by the time we'd left London, which was a good thing as I'm sure I'd read somewhere that flying with a cold isn't good for you.

Molly had supplied us both with what seemed to be tea with added gravy. I suspect it was the sort of thing people were given in the past to make them get well faster - mainly because nobody wanted to have a nice mug of gravy with breakfast for any longer than necessary. It had certain got rid of my cold and seemed to have mostly worked with Nightingale, although he was still trying to shake the last of the cough. Would sea air be good for that? People always seem to think so, but it could be one of those complete bollocks things like getting a cold if go out with wet hair.

Silence stretched out between us, and after realising I'd left it far to long to say that I actually admired him and was worried about how hard he was taking things, I decide to go for what I thought was safest. "At least we won't be on the boat for too much longer." We'd managed a third of it according to my watch. I could even hope that it was the worse third and it would be better from now on, although that did seem like wishful thinking.

"It will be several hours yet," Nightingale said miserably, one arm now curled around his stomach. "We haven't docked at Orkney yet."

"Maybe once we get to Orkney they'll stop for a while before going back out to sea? The storm might have stopped by then."

"One can hope." Seeming to have given up of trying to sleep Nightingale got up. "I have little love of the sea and even less affinity with ships. This journey is doing little to revise that opinion." He headed unsteadily for the cabin door. "I'm going to see if a little fresh air might be of help."

"Okay," I replied hoping that he didn't want me to come with him. Moving about seemed like a recipe for disaster where holding on to my lunch was concerned.

I must have actually fallen asleep eventually as Nightingale all but falling back into the cabin woke me up. He was dripping wet and shivering so badly he could barely open and close the door. He looked absolutely wretched and I had little doubt that going outside had prevented him being sick.

Somehow between us he managed to get out of his wet clothes. I don't think we spoke at all. It was one of those moments where you didn't need a fuss made about it, you just need some help and then for it never to be spoken of again. Ever. Rather like Ravi's stag do. Six years on and we still don't talk about just what happened to the sofa at his Aunt Suki's house.

The St Clair was still rocking when Nightingale finally managed to get into bed, but it wasn't as bad as it had been. An announcement over the tannoy system shortly after that informed us that we were now in Scapaflow and would be docking in Kirkwall in Orkney in around half an hour. Only a hour and a half later than scheduled. Given the conditions I thought that was pretty good going really. We were still docked in Kirkwall when I managed to get back to sleep and it was how I stayed until morning. I'm lucky like that.

Twelve hours turned out to be the time the crossing took in good weather, so it was only after seventeen stomach churning hours that me and Nightingale finally arrived in Lerwick harbour. Nightingale would have told me that it should have said I rather than me, but he still looked green and was swaying on his feet as we waited for the St Clair to dock.

Somehow he'd managed to get up, dressed and had even had shave without any help. I'd skipped that last part as it didn't grow all that fast and I liked my skin still attached. I'd managed a cup of weak tea, but he'd not been able to face it. At least the last couple of hours had been without any dashes for the bathroom for him. Trying to be sick when there's nothing left to get rid of is one of life's truly miserable experiences.

There was no nice terminal building or anything much in Lerwick and the St Clair bobbed wildly as the walkway that had been extended down from the ship to the quayside lifted clear of the ground on the worse swells. Eventually we got off the ship and I decided that regardless of how much it cost or how long I had to wait I was flying back. It didn't look like I'd be getting any arguement of Nightingale about it either.

I’d been expecting Shetland to be like Scotland, only with extra Scottishness, but it looked more those Scandinavian cop shows that seemed to be all the rage at the moment. It was also a hell of a lot colder than I thought it would be. The clock, thermometer and wind gauge thing on the ferry terminal building showed as much, just thirty-four degrees. Or one degree if you like Celsius, as most people seemed to when the temperatures were low. The only reason they did as far as I could tell was so they could say it was zero on a cold day. They would conveniently switch back to Fahrenheit when the temperatures rose again so they could say it was over a hundred when it was hot.

The cold, damp air or maybe last night's soaking had seemed to have kick started Nightingale's cold again, and he was trying not to cough and sneeze on me as he huddled in what looked like a smokers shelter while we waited for our police pick up.

We didn't have to wait long. A slim, white guy in his mid-thirties, his blond hair plastered flat against his head by the rain, hurried over to us. “Are you DCI Nightingale and PC Grant, from the Met?” He held out his hand to Nightingale, who after a pause to cough and then put back his handkerchief, shook it. “I'm DC Wilson. Although everybody calls Sandy. DCI Perez sent me to make sure you got to the station alright.”

I'd expected to get a PC sent to get us and maybe a squad car if the station was a bit of a walk from the ferry terminal. Not that I was complaining, it was nice to be appreciated.

"Yes, thank you," Nightingale said, sounding relieved. "Quite some whether you seem to have up here."

“It’s not the worse its been,” Sandy said with the cheerfulness of somebody who’s not spent the last seventeen hours feeling like they were inside a washing machine stuck on spin. He shook my hand, before continuing, “Worse one in recent years was back in 2001. Near on forty hours it took them. People were scared it was going to founder and there would have no been safe to take the lifeboats out.”

I’d half expected him to go off on a ‘you soft southerners’ spiel after that, but he looked us over again and took pity on us. “It was a rough night,” he said. “Do you want to go straight to the station or are you going to go to your hotel first? I can’t imagine trying to eat anything on the St Clair would have been a good idea.”

“I’ll notify our Bed and Breakfast from the station,” Nightingale said, muffling a another cough in his handkerchief. "We are already running late."

Sandy looked surprised and if I was honest, so was I. I just hoped they hadn't let our rooms to somebody else when we'd failed to show to last night. Sandy didn't say anything more about it and lead us through the drizzle to his car, a fairly plain little Corsa, was parked. The heater had been running in the car and we all steamed quietly on the short drive up to the station.

 

TBC

Next part Thursday 11th September.


	2. Chapter 2

Being as it was the main police station for the whole of Shetland I’d expected Lerwick Central to be rather bigger than it was, which was about the size of the nick in Camden. I wondered if there wasn’t much crime here or if it was because there weren’t many people to commit crime the first place. I eventually settled on it being down to a bit both. All the same it was warm, dry and the floor didn’t try to throw you off your feet, so it was about a million times better than the St Clair had been.

Sandy showed us through to an office that had police stamped all over it and then went to get us some coffee. Nightingale sat down in a chair and started looking at a copy of the local newspaper, presumably in the hope of spotting something that might be connected to our magical theft. Which left me holding the bags and looking out of the window at dismal looking grey stone buildings along the shoreline and the treeless landscape rising behind them. It only reinforced my belief that the far north of Scotland wasn't the natural home of the London Copper.

DI Perez arrived before Sandy got back with our drinks. He proved to be a shortish man in his late forties with gingery hair and an impressive collection of freckles. I couldn't help but wonder if there was a trend for ginger Scottish blokes to have names that really didn't sound like they were. Dr Walid would probably know how to do the stats on that, and he'd laugh that it was too small a sample size to conclude anything.

Perez, or Jimmy as told us we could call him when they weren't dealing with the public, seemed like a class bloke. Anybody who suggests tea and a stack of bacon sandwiches to go with a briefing was alright by me. I wondered if it was a usual thing or if it was them showing us Londoners that they knew how to run things up here thank you very much.

I had little doubt they knew what they were doing, but the place seemed a little bit behind the times. Kind of like I'd gone into a police station back in the late Nineties. Actual paper notice boards on the wall rather than virtual ones, old chunky backed computer monitors rather than flat screens and and piles of paper files on desks. I wondered whether this was part of the whole North-South funding divide that politicians said was a thing of the past and that comedians still joked about. Or maybe it was urban versus rural. Maybe they didn't want or need anything newer. Part of me wanted to believe that, the rest of me was more sceptical.

The one thing that Lerwick Central had got which Camden didn't was a dog. A shaggy, black and white collie type had sidled into the room shortly after the sandwiches had arrived and proceeded to stare at Sandy until he'd given him some. It then did the same with Perez. Eventually, after making a circuit of the room, it lay down under Sandy's desk. I wondered if it was his dog, but the look on Sandy's face when it started drooling in its sleep over his shoe made me think otherwise. After some complaining a uniformed sergeant came and took the dog back out to where it had a basket under the front desk.

Sandy was more reserved now we were back at the station, there seemed to be something sad about him. Not sad like when kids say it when they mean boring or rubbish, just preoccupied and unhappy. The third detective, Alison McIntosh, or Tosh as everybody seemed to call her, was about my age and definitely fell into the category of cute. She also looked like she'd give as good as she got, so winding her up would probably end with me looking like a complete tit, and I would have thoroughly deserved it. The fact that I was noticing that, I decided meant that I was definitely feeling a lot better now that I was back on dry land.

"We've set up a room with a whiteboard and if you need it there's a projector you can use, just get Sergeant McBride, Billy, to sign it out for you. He's knows where the spare bulbs are if it blows again," Perez said as he showed us through to a what was probably a spare interview room. "If we get a major case we might need it back, but hopefully it shouldn't take too long for you wrap up your case, so you should be alright. You just let us know what you need and we'll see if we can come to an arrangement."

It had to be a bit awkward for DI Perez with Nightingale technically outranking him. I hoped it wouldn't end up being an issue. Although the only situation where it would be was if Nightingale tried to order people to do stuff Perez didn't want them to do. I doubted he would unless things were starting to go very wrong, and he couldn't come up with a good explantion. It was the problem of operating far more under the radar here than we would have been in London.

"Our main issue, beside the obvious need to find our suspect, is one of transport," Nightingale said. "The loan of an unmarked car would be helpful and would the assistance of somebody with local knowledge."

"We've not got a spare we can loan out at the moment. But Sandy knows more about Shetland and Lerwick than just about anyone I know, on or off the force," Perez said, "If it's local knowledge that you need he'll know or know where to find out. So for the duration of your investigation I've assigned Sandy to help you, including being your driver while you're here. Apart from on Tuesday evening, if that's alright with you DCI Nightingale."

"What happens on Tuesday?" Nightingale asked. He sounded less than happy about having somebody along for the ride and I suspected that as soon as we were done here we'd be looking for somewhere that did hire cars so we could leave Sandy at the station to take any incoming calls.

"Nothing usually," Tosh said, sounding a little glum about it. "That's Shetland for you, but it's the last Tuesday in January, so it's Up Helly Aa."

Yeah, I had no idea what that meant. Neither did Nightingale if the look on his face was anything to go by. Or maybe he was trying not to start coughing again. Either was possible.

"It's a fire festival. The largest in Europe," Sandy said when nobody else had taken pity on us and told us what it was. "It's been going on in one form or another for more than a hundred years. There are parades, music and the like in the day and it ends at night when we burn the longship. People come from all over the world to see it."

That was us told. There was a definite sense of national pride there and I couldn't help but wonder if Trolhoulland did actually turn out to be some magical nationalist nut if Sandy could be a bit a problem. Conflict of interests and all that. I wanted to think that as a police officer he'd be able to separate his own feelings from the requirements of the job, but then so had Lesley and look how that had turned out.

After our quick tour of the station. Here are the interview rooms, the loos and so on, Nightingale made it clear he was going to start work on the case today. So we filled Sandy in on what we had so far and asked whether he'd been able to get the CCTV footage we'd requested. We'd sent a CCTV print from the museum in Greenwich of Gavra Trolhoulland and the time his ferry should have docked in Lerwick on ahead of us.

Sandy, as it turned out had done better than just find the right camera and get the footage, he'd already reviewed it and picked up Trolhoulland leaving Victoria Quay and heading into Lerwick on foot. Short, a couple of inches short of five foot tall, thin, wearing a tweed jacket and carrying a large holdall, he was pretty distinctive and we had little difficultly following him from one camera to the next as he made his way through town.

I'd hoped that that we'd see him get picked up in a car so we could trace a number plate or even better head into a hotel, where we could go and arrest him. Case closed. It didn't happen, but when are we ever that lucky? Trolhoulland continued on foot, walking along the Esplanade until he finally left the view of the camera.

"That's it I'm afraid," Sandy said. He took a proper old school VHS video out of its player. "That's the extent of the CCTV coverage on that road. There isn't anything much until you get out to the new shopping complex at Clickimmin a mile or so away. It's an odd route to go to get there, he'd have been better off heading onto Scalloway Road and getting the bus."

The idea that some people have that they are watched everywhere they go just isn't true. Okay it was probably mostly true in London, but once you got out of urban areas there wasn't anything much watching you. And right now that was a bit of a problem. "What do we do now?" I asked. I hoped that the answer wasn't go door to door down the Esplanade and onto Twageos Road, which was where Trolhoulland had gone when we'd lost sight of him.

"There's not much down there," Sandy said. "There's a secondary school, some houses and a private car park. He'll have met somebody at the car park. Probably assumed that they won't be seen there."

"Why do you think he's meeting somebody?" Nightingale asked. "We haven't got any information that would suggest he wasn't acting alone. Unless you have found anything more?"

Sandy paused and I got the impression he was thinking of something to say that wouldn't sound like he thought he was more clued up than his DCI about the case. "I don't know for certain," he said eventually. "But you said he'd been in London for a while, at least a couple of weeks. If he'd left his car parked there for so long people would have noticed. People look out for each other up here."

"Does the car park have CCTV?" I asked. Because if it didn't it was no use at all. I supposed we could get a 'have you seen this man' poster done and put it up in the car park in the hope somebody might recognise him, but doing that meant admitting we were already out of ideas.

Sandy nodded.

Nightingale looked at the clock. It was early afternoon now. "How long does it take to get a warrant to see private CCTV footage here?"

"A warrant?" Sandy said surprised. "You don't think Belle's in on this somehow, do you? I'll just give her a call and she'll let us pop round and see it. It won't be a problem."

"Who's Belle?" I asked, wondering if she might be a relation. Things would be super awkward if she was. We'd have to ask for another officer to be assigned to us if she seemed in to implicated in any way.

"Mrs Gillespie, she runs the car park. She use to be a dinner lady at the school I went to. Now they've got a sixth form college on it now, so when she retired she figured there would be a need for cheap parking for older students." Sandy smiled. "She's a canny one is Belle, but she'd not be into anything that wasn't right. That's just not her."

"We won't know until we speak to her," Nightingale said. "Sometimes people can surprise you."

I doubted he meant any kind of good surprise, so I didn't say anything.

Nightingale went with Sandy to get the car, leaving me to hand our bags over to the sergeant with the smelly dog for safe keeping and possible drooling on.

"I'm probably going to regret asking this and it's not my business in the first place," Perez said, once the bag had been thankfully put on a shelf above dog height. "But you and your DCI, I'm getting the feeling there's more to it than him just having picked a PC to drag with him to the leg work."

Okay, now this was awkward. I really didn't want him doing any digging into what we did and what kind of cases we were involved in. "I've been assigned to DCI Nightingale for nearly three years," I said. "We're a very small department, we take cases like these stolen museum pieces."

Perez smiled. "I guess it's a bit different down in the smoke. We don't really have teams like that. Can't say I'm jealous really, more variety here. Stolen ponies one week, fishing dispute the next and maybe a bar fight between men coming back off the rigs. There's always enough to keep us busy."

It only occurred to me once we were outside that maybe he'd not been thinking about us secretly being some elite unit. Maybe he thought Nightingale had a thing for me or me for him. It was probably safer letting him assume that try to convince him otherwise. I mean Nightingale was a good looking guy and I had little doubt that if he wanted to direct that kind of affection towards me I'd probably be flattered enough to go why the hell not, it's worth trying anything once. But he hadn't, and right now, with things as strained as they had been between us I just wanted some sort of sign that he still trusted me and wanted me as his apprentice rather than just some kind of magical foot soldier in his fight against Faceless.

I should have talked with him about it before we'd left for Shetland. But the idea that maybe he really was regretting having me as an apprentice, especially as I was the one who'd shown Lesley magic and set her on the path that lead to her leaving, worried me enough that I hadn't said anything. I mean what if he didn't want me around anymore? I couldn't go back to being an ordinary PC on the beat, not after all I'd seen. So as I'd done with a couple of hated classes in school, I kept my head down, and hoped that it would either get better or that the final exams would hurry up and come.

Even if he'd stopped talking to me about much more than magical theory or that I needed to practice more, I still worried about him. Right now it was the cough that bothered me. Not because I was worried I might catch it, it was a left over of the cold I gave him in the first place, but that it was a sign he coming down with something nasty. Nightingale didn't know the meaning of take it easy at the best of times and working a case a few hundred miles from home was hardly the best of anything. Nightingale was still coughing periodically, but looked less green as we drove to the car park on Twageos Road. It turned out not to be that far and if the weather had been better I think we could have walked it in less than half an hour.

The car park was a small privately run affair and I suspected that it had started life as part of a very large back garden for the bungalow that stood fenced off in one corner of it. The bungalow turned out to be both the home and office of the owner of the car park. Belle Gillespie wasn't from Shetland. I got that the second she spoke. The accent was Glaswegian, although fortunately enough for us southerners tempered a bit perhaps by years away from the city to make it understandable.

About five foot two in her pink and white trainers, Belle had Clare tattooed on one plump hand and Kelly on the other. I suspected if she'd been a guy it would probably have been love and hate. About fifty years old at my best guess, she had tough family matriarch stamped all over her. There wasn't much in the way of security around the car park, just a chain link fence and the CCTV camera mounted on a pole over the ticket machine. All the same, I wouldn't have played about in her car park and that was for sure.

"Sandy, man," she said, grabbing his hand and shaking it. "Is this work? Cannae be telling now you're not in uniform."

"Work. I was wondering if we could have a look at your CCTV from Monday morning."

"Do I want to know why?" she asked, waving us through into a room that seemed part spare bedroom and part CCTV control room.

"You know I can't tell you that," Sandy replied. "But you don't need to be worrying about your girls or anything, and I mean it."

"Alright then. You ain't going to be long, are you?" Belle said as she looked through a book case filled with tapes. "Closing the parking at five, I've got my grandkiddies round you see."

"We will be as quick as we can," Sandy said. "If we find what we're looking for on it we will need to take the tape."

"That's alright by me." She laughed. "I'm easy like that."

Nightingale cleared his throat, while looking rather despairing about the whole situation. "If we may begin, Mrs Gillespie?"

"Right you are," Belle said shoving a video into a player.

It took a bit of fast-forwarding and rewinding to get to the right bit. The right bit being the part that proved Sandy had been right. Trolhoulland walked up to the car park about ten minutes after leaving the Lerwick footage, still carrying the bag and hadn't had time to go else where on route. He'd definitely walked this way with the intention of getting to the car park.

He stood by the entrance barrier for a moment and then looked sharply round. The sound of a car horn was my guess. Not that there was any audio to go with the footage. He started walking again and then stopped next to an incredibly muddy landrover. Trolhoulland paused to speak to the driver and then walked round and got into the front passenger seat next to them. A minute or so later the landrover drove out of the car park and out of sight of the camera.

Who the driver had been was a mystery. The footage was so grainy we couldn't tell anything about them beyond the fact they existed. We rewound the tape to see when the landrover had arrived. It had only been about twenty minutes before, but fortunately for us the driver had got out and put some money into the meter. The image wasn't great, but it seemed to show a man in a waterproof coat with the hood up against the rain. Unfortunately, because there is always an unfortunately in these things as far as I can tell, he didn't once turn to face the camera. It shouldn't have been a problem, we should have been able to run the plates, but the plates were covered in mud and all we could get was that the last letter was a E or possibly a B.

Sandy called in what we'd found and put in a request to the DVLA for all early Defender series Landrovers on Shetland. It seemed like an act of desperation to me, but Sandy pointed out that there were less than ten thousand vehicles on Shetland and it was presumably registered in Shetland as Trolhoulland hadn't brought it over on the ferry with him.

Maybe we'd get a break, but I didn't feel like we could leave it at that for the day. Nightingale didn't either, so after a bit of talking things through between him and Sandy we headed for the Lerwick museum. The other less interesting archaeological finds from the 1976 excavation of Griminsta hut circle had ended up in storage there, so maybe our rock thief had been there asking questions before he'd gone to London.

The museum in Lerwick reminded me a bit of the one in London where the Pictish rocks had been taken from. Tucked away in a side street it housed a little bit of everything. Stone bowls and axe heads, Victorian photographs of whiskery fishermen with harpoons, a scale model of a viking longship and a grey lump of what was apparently preserved butter dug up from a peat bog, were all neatly displaced in the few rooms that made up the public area of the museum.

Sandy knew the member of staff who came over to speak to us. Local knowledge was a handy thing, and after a few minutes of Nightingale explaining what we needed, she'd shown us into the museums reading room and got out the register of who'd come in to look at things. It wasn't a very long list and it only took us a few minutes to find Trolhoulland's name written in the book. It turned out he'd visited the reading room a grand total of once on the Sixteenth of December the previous year to look at the archaeological report of the Griminsta excavations. He'd also looked at a couple of other sites at Westerquarf and Jarlshof. We had a quick look at the reports and realised what they all had in common was a Pictish link and all had had carved stone balls found at them.

Hoping that our thief hadn't nicked them too, we asked after where the stones were. As it turned out they were both in Lerwick, held in the archive at the Shetland Amenity Trust. We could see them on Monday if we wanted to, Carrie, our super helpful museum assistant had told us. There wasn't much more we could do at the museum so Nightingale called the Amenity Trust to ask about their stone balls and make an appointment to see them. I'm not sure I could have kept a straight face phoning somebody up and asking to see their stone balls, but Nightingale managed with not even the hint of a smile. Professionalism or no sense of humour? I had no idea.

It was pushing four o'clock when we got back to the station and it felt like we'd achieved sod all and now had more questions than we came with. I didn't want to be negative, but all we had was an accomplice with an old, muddy landrover and the information that Trolhoulland had visited the museum once back in December when he read the report and then left. Unless we got something on the landrover we had nothing. I think Nightingale was feeling as negative about it all as I was as he had his 'don't talk to me, unless you have something useful to say' frown on.

After a brief stop at our whiteboard to add what we'd found we'd been ready to head to our B&B when Tosh came in. Heading over to Sandy she said, "Don't want to drop this on you, but Mr Leask has just called about his rocks again. He wants you to come this time, apparent I'm no use. Otherwise he said he was going to come to the station and demand to speak to our  
Procurator Fiscal."

"Ms Kelly would love that," Sandy said, shaking his head. "I suppose I'd better go and talk to him again. Is it still pixies rearranging his rock garden when he's not looking? Or are we back to the one where his neighbour moves the wall in night and is slowly stealing his garden?"

"Rockery." Tosh gave him an apologetic smile. "I don't like dropping it on you, but I've got to go. I’ve already got it booked. I'll got next time."

Every police station had one. The persistent caller with the crazy stories. All Nightingale heard the word 'rocks' and decided that as remote as Mr Leask's rock garden being connected to Trolhoulland was we'd have to go and rule it out just to be sure.

We took the road heading in the opposite direction from the one to Belle's car park this time and about ten minutes after we'd left the station Sandy parked the car in front of a rundown looking cottage. Around the cottage were rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. Mostly from the beach at a guess, but some looked like they were just rubble from somewhere that had been demolished. Some of them still had the rusted metal reinforcing bars in the concrete. There had been an attempt to arrange them into something that somebody might have generously called art.

Waiting for us at the door to the cottage was Mr Robbie Leask. Short and probably as round as he was tall, although as he was dressed in a wardrobe full worth layers so that I couldn't quite tell if he had any form of shape under them at all. Wiry grey hair poked out from under a grubby beanie hat, while the face underneath seemed like somebody had left a pair of eyes, a nose and a mouth in a sea of deeply etched wrinkles. You could have gravelled a road with his voice, as it sounded like he'd smoked about forty a day for last hundred years.

"About time they sent you," Robbie said as Sandy opened the gate. "No more being fobbed off with that wee lassie. She'd a pretty one I'll give you, but she'd got no time for the old ways." Robbie stopped and looked at me and Nightingale. "Who are they?"

"Colleagues from London. They are investigating a case that may link in with your own," Sandy replied. "This is Detective Chief Inspector Nightingale and Constable Grant."

Robbie seemed less than impressed. "I 'spose as I'd better show you my garden. Mind you don't be touching it. I can't have it touched."

We stood and listened, nodding in the right places, as me and Nightingale checked fir vestigia or anything that might suggest there was anything magical about Robbie's rocks. There wasn't. Not that I'd expected there to be.

"It's the Peerie folk, I'm telling you that," Robbie said stomping over to one of the rock piles. He peeled off the filthy fingerless mittens to reveal almost as dirty hands, then picked up one of the unremarkable stones. Then he stared at me. "People like YOU wouldn't understand."

I'm not normally lost for words, bur for a second couldn't actually believe Robbie had said it. I mean regardless of what the media might say about us being a post-racial society there were those little Englanders who couldn't get beyond the colour of a person's skin. The point was that people tended to be less overt about their racism these days, especially in front of the police, which is why it took me by surprise. I was about to respond with a restrained under the circumstances 'People like what?' when Robbie glared Nightingale with far more distaste than he'd managed for me. He pointed cracked and grubby finger nail at him. "Him neither. None who’s not of the Old Rock, them don't see it."

Okay, so Robbie had it in for anybody not from Shetland. It was better than the alternative, but not by much. I hoped Robbie's attitude wasn't common on Shetland or our investigation would be made a lot trickier than it already was.

"You though," Robbie shuffled over to Sandy and prodded him in the chest. "You're Mima's kin. I expected better of you. You more than anyone I could ask. I don't think she was wrong in what she believed, touched by the sea trou.."

"No more of that, Robbie. Not know," Sandy said, taking a step back. "You called the police, you can't expect us to go chasing things from children's stories. It'll just be kids or the wind, like DS McIntosh told you the last time."

I wished that Sandy had let Robbie finish talking as all I could come up with to end the sentence was sea trout and that really didn't make any sense. I mean pixies rearranging your rock garden wasn't likely, but telling somebody they are touched by a fish is just gibberish. I was also pretty certain that I was now going to have the Monty Python fish slapping sketch going through my head for the rest of the day.

"You might try to act like you're not of the Old Rock for these city boys, but I know you Alexander Wilson. I know you and your kind. It'll out before the wind changes, you mark my words." Robbie grinned, all gums. "Then where'll you be. They won't be having you then, you city friends. Now off with the lot of you. I'm busy."

We left him muttering about us turning up uninvited and went back to the car.

"I'm sorry about that," Sandy said once we were driving back. "Robbie is getting on a bit now. He went to school with my grandmother back in the thirties. I don't think he'll be able to stay on there much longer on his own. It's sad really."

It was. I wondered if the old guy was just lonely, if that’s what the calls were about. The suspicious copper part of me still wondered if there was something Robbie was hiding. Nightingale didn’t say anything about it. He looked at bit preoccupied although if it was about the case in general or whether it was fact he was nearly old enough to be the guy’s granddad and he was a bit weirded out by it, I didn't know.

As interesting as a diversion to visit one of the local characters of Shetland was it hadn't got us any closer to figuring out anything else about Trolhoulland's plans or who his accomplice might be. There wasn't much else we could do apart from call it a day, so Sandy took us back to the station to pick up our bags and then dropped us at our B&B.

Nightingale wasn’t even trying to hide the fact he was exhausted by the time we'd booked into the Sea View bed and breakfast and got our bags up to our rooms, which sadly didn't have a view of the sea at all. Any plans about scoping out anywhere by ourselves wasn't going to happen, so we decided on getting some food and then sleep. We ended up going to a takeaway simply because it was nearest to the B&B, rather than because we believed the sign outside stating they had the best fish and chips in Shetland. It was actually pretty good fish, mainly because it had been swimming about in the sea a couple of days ago.

Talking through the case this evening or taking another look around the car park was a non-starter as Nightingale disappeared into his room shortly after we got back to the B&B. I briefly thought about going out and seeing what actually went on in Lerwick on a Saturday night before decided I was too tired to be bothered either. Nightingale's room was across the hall from mind and heard him coughing a few times in the night, but I was tired enough that once I'd finally got to sleep I stayed that way until morning.

 

TBC

next part Thursday 18th September.

A/N  
Sorry about the lateness of this part, which is mostly down to my oven catching fire (kitchen okay, but new oven to buy).

Perez, Sandy, Tosh, Sergeant Billy McBride and his dog which is always on the scrounge for food are from Shetland. Belle, the museum assistant and the very strange Robbie Leask are made up for this story. The police station is the one shown in the series Shetland and isn't the real Lerwick central police station. The other locations, with the exception of Belle's car park and the B&B, do all exist.


	3. Chapter 3

Sunday morning dawned cold, grey and wet. Not that seeing the sunrise meant getting up early, not here at this time of year, it didn't start to get light until about half eight in the morning. I hadn't particularly wanted to leave my bed when my alarm went off at seven; it was warm and dry and I suspected that once we left the B&B I wouldn't be that again until evening. I didn't really have much choice as I could already hear Nightingale moving about and coughing. So I made the effort to get up and look something like presentable and went down for breakfast.

Nightingale was already there and he looked rough. Not rough by most peoples’ standards admittedly, he was still dressed and smart in one of those three piece suits that look so good on him, his hair combed and his tie done in a fancy knot that I'd probably end up choking myself with if I attempted it. Despite that he still looked worse than when we'd got off the St Clair, all grey and pasty from not enough sleep.

I knew he must be feeling dire as he didn't attempt to discuss the case with me over breakfast, something we'd got into a habit of at the Folly. Not that you could really call it eating breakfast. He hardly touched his and I could imagine Molly giving him one of her deeply unnerving stares should he have left so much on his plate at home. I wasn't sure when I'd started calling the Folly home, but it felt right, so it didn't bother about over-thinking it. What did bother me was Nightingale or rather the fact that he was ignoring the fact he looked like death warmed up. So after a short discussion, which was mostly me trying to talk sense and him not wanting to listen, I somehow managed to persuade him that we should stop at Boots or whatever it was they had up here and get something so he didn't spend the entire day coughing over everybody.

As it was we didn't, mainly because we couldn't find anywhere open. Well not apart from a pub on the quayside which seemed to catered to men coming in from the North Sea oil rigs who wanted a double vodka at nine on a Sunday morning. As we walked up to Lerwick Central I soon came to the conclusion that nothing happens in Shetland on a Sunday. I think that they should have that printed on the top of any tourist brochures produced about the place to give any would be holiday makers fair warning.

Fortunately for us Sandy seemed to be only too happy to give up his day off and drive us around and he'd agreed to meet us at the station at eleven. We could have hired a car had anywhere been open to do so, but having somebody who actually knew where they were going was something that money couldn't buy, especially as anywhere that sold maps of the island was also likely to be closed.

Despite sounding like he was attempting to cough up a lung, Nightingale wouldn't hear of me heading out to Griminsta by myself. Pointing out that Sandy would be there too didn't seem to help either. Griminsta had been where our magical rocks had been found and the archaeological report on then had suggested that they might have been part of a set. If our museum thief had stolen them because of their magic storage properties and was looking for the rest then we could run in problems of a variety that your average copper couldn’t deal with. He had a point and it wasn't like I could order him not to go.

The main reason for the visit to the station was to check whether there was any CCTV anywhere near Griminsta. There wasn't. In fact as far as I could tell there was only widespread CCTV coverage in Lerwick and Scalloway, plus whatever individual companies had arranged for themselves elsewhere. The only other thing of note was that the Up Helly Aa thing was happening in a couple of days which meant that Shetland was currently full of people who weren't locals. So asking people about anybody who wasn't local wasn't likely to help. Assuming of course that Trolhoulland wasn't local to start with. For all we knew his thieving trip to London could have been the first time he'd ever left Shetland. The DVLA hadn't got back to us about the landrover so we headed out to Griminsta to have a look round.

The Tesco at Clickimmin was open when we drove past and Nightingale actually went in and got some cough mixture. He took as much of it as he could, not that it seemed to make much difference. I hoped he'd picked up some painkillers as well, although if he had they weren't touching the headache that I knew he'd got. I could always tell when he had one as he'd be snappier than usual and rubbed his temples when he thought I wasn't looking. I guessed he didn't want me to worry about him, not with the whole manky cauliflower magic brain thing. But after everything that had happened it kind of hurt that he didn't feel able to let his guard down around me and admit he wasn't feeling great. I mean what did he think I was going to do? I wasn't going to go all Lesley on him. Did he really think that I might? I hoped not. It had been hard enough losing Lesley over what she'd done without ending up losing Nightingale as well.

I tried not to think about it by looking out of the window and trying to remember the route out to Griminsta in case Nightingale and me needed to make our own way out here at some point in the near future. I gave up after a while as everywhere to my city boy eyes looked the same. Narrow roads with views of rocky inlets and wide sandy beaches, there were a few fields along the coast, but for the most part it looked like grim, featureless moorland with the occasional rock poking up out of the peat for variety. If I'd thought Lerwick was pretty small for a town then the villages that we drove through Griminsta were tiny. How half a dozen houses clustered together around a small beach or along the side of a road qualified as a village I didn't know. I couldn't imagine living in a place like this. I wondered how young people in Shetland occupied themselves or whether they moved to somewhere like Edinburgh as soon as they were old enough for a bit of life and excitement.

I thought about asking Sandy, but starting a conversation with 'How to do manage to live here without dying of boredom?' isn't ever likely to go down well. If Nightingale was thinking anything he wasn't sharing it with me. Which was something that was happening with worrying frequency these days.

"Here we are," Sandy said suddenly. He pulled the car into what looked like a passing place on a narrow road in the middle of nowhere.

Even Nightingale looked surprised. "Are you certain? There doesn't seem to be anything here."

Sandy actually looked offended at that, although he didn't sound it when he said, "I'm sure. I've been here a couple of times before. Not recently, but the site has been here since the Bronze Age. I doubt it has moved."

It was a bit of hike out to where the stones had been found. Sandy lead the way looking totally at ease with the place. He'd not even bothered to bring a map with him. The path, such as it was was just a narrow line where the grass was marginally shorter than it was elsewhere and I doubted that I would have noticed it without him having pointed it out first. That said I suspected that had our situations been reversed he'd have been as out of his depth in the heart of London. But at least London came with handy things like road signs and people.

Griminsta was empty. I'm not sure I'd ever seen a place that was quite so full of nothing. Why had anybody ever chosen to live there? Had the weather been better? Did Shetland have its own weird backwards global warming? Anti warming? Or had something happened to the place? Could it have been connected with the Pictish stones? Maybe Robbie Leask had been right about rocks controlling the weather up here? It was at that point I decided that the emptiness was getting to my brain if it was now agreeing with Leask.

There was nothing to indicate that anybody else had been up here recently, so after a little bit of discussion we spread out, walking about ten metres from each other across the site looking for anything out of place. If nothing else it gave me and Nightingale a chance to check for vestigia or anything else weird about the place.

I'd not expected to find anything and after about ten minutes I decided that if I didn't find anything soon I'd ask Nightingale if there was some other way we could do a search of the place. I hoped he'd get what I meant as it was pretty awkward having Sandy along now that we were here.

At that moment Sandy waved to us and then called out, "I think I've found something."

We hurried over to him. Well I hurried, Nightingale walked and still seemed a bit out of breath. Although a glare from him stopped me from asking him if he wanted me to slow down.

What Sandy had found was a small hole. The sides were too neat for it to have been made by an animal. Nothing in nature digs square holes apart from a person with a spade. There was always a chance that it was completely unconnected, but I doubted it.  
I crouched down, combining having a look at it with a quick check for vestigia. There was a hint of something magical, nothing particularly strong, although I suspected that if we'd had Toby with us he'd have been able to follow it or find more.

Somebody, and I was willing to bet that it was Trolhoulland or maybe landrover driving friend, had either got something magical out of the ground here or been doing something to site. What it was I had no idea, the vestigia was faint, and all I got was the smell of salt water and feeling like mossy stones. Closing my eyes, I tried to get something more. Sadness. There was definitely a sense of loss there, not painful like it had just happened. Something old that had never gone away.

"Peter." I heard Nightingale say rather more sharply than he usually would. "Have you found anything?"

I looked round to see both Nightingale and Sandy staring at me. Nightingale I could understand, he was probably trying to figure out what the vestigia meant too. Sandy looked hurriedly elsewhere like he didn't want to be caught looking. At what? I wondered. Not the hole, he'd already looked at that. At me? Had he been checking me out? Okay, now that was embarrassing all round. Being checked out by another guy or anyone else for that matter in front of Nightingale wasn't something I wanted. I was still flattered, I guess, but I wasn't interested in that kind of thing at the moment.

There was the outside chance, I thought, that he was staring because he realised that I was looking for magic and it had taken him by surprise, but that seemed a whole lot less likely that him checking me out. I mean a copper is far more likely to be gay or bi than he is to have magical ability.  
  
We were saved from any further weirdness by me spotting that we weren't alone. Standing on low rise about thirty metres away and looking back at us was a man. It didn't take a genius to figure out who the short, slight, tweed wearing and spade carrying individual was. “That’s him, Trolhoulland," I said.

"Well get after him," Nightingale said.

I didn't need telling twice and after calling, "Stop, Police!" I ran towards him. There was a brief moment when I was moving and Trolhoulland wasn't and then he turned and ran like hell.

I'm no slouch at running and neither was Sandy who was keeping pace with me, but running over the uneven ground, where your feet suddenly sunk into the peat under you or tangled grasses threaten to trip you up did slow us down. It should have slowed Trolhoulland down as well, but he easily outstripped us both, almost seeming to fly across moorland and he was soon lost from view amongst the deep peat cuttings higher on the moor.

Sandy stopped first. Leaning forward, hands braced on his knees as he got his breath back. There wasn't any point tearing off by myself, I had no idea where we were. In London I wouldn't have given it a second thought, but here, where I knew there were peat bogs I could sink into without trace I didn't want to chance it. I'd never hear the last of it from Nightingale if we missed catching Trolhoulland because he'd had to come and get me out of some mud.

"Where's your DCI?" Sandy asked as he looked past me and back the way we'd come.

That was a damn good point. I'd expected Nightingale to be just a few paces behind us now we'd stopped running, but he was nowhere to be seen. Which was odd as there didn't seem to be anywhere much that he could have gone. The landscape was bare apart from the rough, knee-high grasses that spread out all around us.

"Would he have gone off the path?" Sandy asked. He sounded worried and I couldn't find any fault with that.

"I don't know." If he'd thought he'd had a chance of cutting the guy off he would have or if he wanted to use some magic to try and slow Trolhoulland down without Sandy seeing. I'd not felt any formae so I guessed it hadn't been that. It didn't make any sense for Nightingale to have left the path either. He didn't know the place any better than I did. I gave one last look in the direction of where we'd lost our potential suspect and then headed back to find Nightingale.

As we reached the top of a slope Sandy suddenly broke into a run. It took me a second to see why and then I pelted down the track after him.

Nightingale was sitting on a tumble of stones at the edge of a track. Hunched forwards, he had one hand pressed to his chest, the other pushed against his knee in an attempt not to fall forwards and face plant in the mud.

As I stopped in front of him Nightingale looked up and glared at me. "Please tell me you didn't let him go on purpose."

I wanted to snap 'Why the hell would I do that?' at him, and ask him if he thought all this was all somehow my fault. I didn't because I was more worried than I was pissed off. The last time I'd heard him sound this rough was after he'd picked up a chest infection following my first fight with Faceless. He'd been laid up for a few days and not right for a couple of weeks afterwards. "We'd already lost him," I said. "It was like chasing Usain Bolt."

Nightingale gave me a baffled look that I recognised as one of his 'I have no idea what you are talking about, and no I don't want it explained to me either' stares. He could say as much with a stare as Molly could and I suspected that they could probably hold a whole conversation without saying word if they wanted to.

"I don't think I've ever seen anybody run so fast, not across the peat hags like that," Sandy said. He looked back up the track to were we'd lost sight of Trolhoulland. "He can certainly move for a little old guy."

"Apparently so," Nightingale said, then hurriedly muffled more coughs into a handkerchief.

"Are you going to be able to walk back the car?" Sandy said, when he'd done. "If you don't think you can I'll call..." He paused for a moment, looked around, like he was deciding exactly where we were before finishing, "Pauly Hanson, he's got one of those quad bikes for getting out to his sheep. He won't mind giving you a lift. His brother Davy is one of the Special Constables."

I guessed this was what they meant by community policing. Everybody knew everybody else and was probably related to them or worked with them or something. It was also why it wasn't likely work anywhere that had a bigger or more mobile population than an island the size of Shetland.

"I am quite capable of walking, thank you," Nightingale said irritably. He got to his feet, waving dismissively at Sandy who'd offered him assistance.

Why Nightingale was in such a mood at Sandy I wasn't sure. Although when I thought about it he had been a bit short with him after the thing with Belle Gillespie's CCTV. I didn't get it. Sandy seemed like a nice helpful bloke who and Nightingale was normally Mr politeness itself when dealing with people. Well unless said people started throwing magic about and then he was probably

Nightingale managed to get back to the car, but it was a close run thing and I suspected that he was running on nothing but sheer bloody mindedness by the time sat down in the back. Which would have sort of been okay if we'd been at the end of an investigation and he been able to take it easy for a while. We didn't, so after a brief stop at Lerwick Central, to record the fact that we'd seen Trolhoulland at Griminsta, we headed back Sea View, where we could talk in private about Trolhoulland, Griminsta and the vestigia without anybody else listening in.

Sandy dropped us off at the end of the street where our B&B was, and said he'd pick us up at eight the next morning, unless we preferred to walk to the station. Nightingale had spoken first and told him yes, we would prefer it. Sandy looked a little hurt, but had said that the weather would be better and maybe some fresh air would be better than his car.

I was going to ask Nightingale what had got him in such a mood when, about half way up the street, he began coughing again. And he went on coughing until he had to sit down on low wall that ran in front of the houses. I was seriously starting to worry that he wasn't going to be able to stop or breathe or something when he finally did.

Red in the face and sweating and shivering, he had a hand pressed against his chest again. All in all, I decided, he really wasn't well and running about after Trolhoulland hadn't helped. Neither had the cough mixture from the sounds of things. I sat down next to him. "Are you going to be alright? Do you need anything?" Apart from Dr Walid to talk sense into you about resting, I thought, because he seemed to be the only person who Nightingale listened to with any degree of frequency.

"I just need a moment to get my breath back," Nightingale replied. He still sounded wheezy and about to start coughing at any moment. "You're making fuss about nothing."

"You call this nothing?" I said. I was surprised at just how annoyed I sounded and I hoped that he got I was worried rather than angry. Actually scrap that, I wasn't just worried I was scared for him, and I really didn't like how that felt. "You can't breathe properly. You're in pain too, aren't you?"

"You're being ridiculous," Nightingale said irritably. "It's only a cold. One you gave me as I seem to remember."

Way to make be feel even worse, why don't you? "And what if it's not? I can't do this by myself," I said. Okay that had sounded far more personal that I'd meant it to. Or was that wanted it to? I wasn't sure what I meant, because all I could see was Nightingale being too bloody stubborn to get chest pains checked out. All the same I felt I had to backpedal a bit out of it and I added. "I mean I don't have the authority to lead the case if you can't. Perez or Tosh could overrule me or take me off the case if they wanted to. I'd have no say in it. We're not in London anymore. We've not got Seawoll or Frank Cafferty or even Dr Walid to back us up if this goes wrong. Sir, please. For the case, if nothing else, just to make sure you're alright."

I'm not the sort of person to beg anybody to do anything, and I'm sure Nightingale knows that, as the next thing he said was, "Perhaps you're right, Peter. The case must come first."

So after phoning for a taxi we spent the rest of the afternoon in Lerwick's A&E department waiting for Nightingale to be checked over. Maybe that was a bit of an over reaction on my part, but there was nowhere else that would see him at such short notice and once you mention chest pain doctors generally start listening. It helped that weren't that many people in the A&E either. If every where had population levels like Shetland I suspected that the NHS would make its waiting time targets every time.

I don't like hospitals much. They have a noise and smell to them that I just can't ever get used to.

"Just a chest infection," Nightingale said, making a poor job of not sounding relieved that it hadn't been anything worse. "Nothing to worry about. A few days of antibiotics and I'll be fine."

I didn't point out that I'd been right and he had needed seeing, it was a pretty hollow kind of victory. So I said, "Do we need to wait for them to write a prescription or anything?"

Nightingale nodded, sat down on a seat next to me and handed me the bit of paper he needed to hand in at the dispensary. "If you wouldn't mind, Peter."

I didn't, I was just relieved he trusted me to do it. It was early evening by the time we headed out of Lerwick General and picked up something to eat on the He looked absolutely worn out by the time we got back to the B&B, but made enough of an attempt at eating it that I wasn't quite so worried about him.

We'd ended up eating in my room as Nightingale said he didn't want the lingering smell of sweet and sour chicken lingering in his room. I didn't really either, but I opened the windows for a bit, before deciding it was too cold. Then Nightingale went back to his to try and sleep.

This meant that I was alone in my room with more thoughts than I liked. It didn't have a telly and with Nightingale asleep and no useful access to anything to do with the case and no transport I decided to the only thing open to me to avoid those thoughts. I'd go to the pub and see what people were talking about. Maybe I'd get a lead. It seemed about as likely to succeed as anything else we'd tried. Maybe I'd bump into Trolhoulland again.

The first pub I came across was the Thule Bar on the Esplanade overlooking Victoria Quay. It looked like the sort of place you wouldn’t go into without backup back in London, but I saw a couple of students types heading over there, so not to be out done by a couple of eighteen year old girls I decided why the hell not and went in as well.

It was a pub. Not a trendy bar, just an old fashioned style boozer with a solid wood bar, slightly tacky floor and dartboard in one corner and a jukebox in the other. The beers on offer weren't familiar. Three hand pull ales from a brewery somewhere in Shetland and McEwans lager. I think it was the first time I'd been to a pub and not seen Stella or Carling at the bar.

"What sort of thing do you normally drink?"

I turned to see Sandy, sitting at one of the corner tables. Drinking alone after the end of a shift either meant you were Billy No-Mates because you'd done something to massively piss off everybody in the station or it had been a tough one where you wanted to get ratted and not have any comments from well meaning colleagues about it. It wasn't after a shift and Sandy didn't seem to be doing either. If he'd been trying to get hammered beer wasn't the way to go, but he was definitely alone and nobody was paying him any attention. All in all he seemed to be fitting into the place about as well as I was.

"Lager, usually," I replied.

"I'd go with the Simmer Dim then," Sandy said. "White Wife is a bit heavier and Auld Rock is more like Guinness."

"Thanks." I ordered my pint, was pleasantly surprised by the fact that it was about half the price I'd pay in London and then said, "Do you mind if I join you?"

"No. I...No," Sandy said not sounding entirely sure. But he moved up so that there was room on the tatty leatherette bench seat for me to sit next to him.

"Look if you're waiting for a date or something I can go somewhere else," I said, hoping that it wasn't the wrong thing to say and that he'd not just been dumped or something. Although that would have explained the down in the dumps look about him.

"No, nothing like that." He looked into his pint and said glumly. "Not much chance of meeting anybody here."

Given that I had the suspicion he'd been checking me out earlier, I had an idea of what he meant, and I doubted Lerwick or anywhere else in Shetland for that matter had much of a gay scene. I didn't Sitting in a pub by yourself isn't all that much fun unless you're out on the pull. Sitting in the pub with somebody who you barely know and who is about as chatty as a barstool is worse. He drank his pint, offered to get me one, which I declined, and bought another for himself.

I guess he must have realised that the whole sitting there drinking in silence thing wasn't much fun, so after having drunk about a quarter of his new pint he said, "How's your DI? He didn't sound too good earlier."

"Trying to sleep," I said, hoping that was the truth. It didn't feel right to mention the trip to hospital. What if Sandy told Perez and we ended up off the case? "I think he over did it bit today."

Sandy gave me a sympathetic look. "I hope he feels better in the morning."

Despite my earlier intentions to try and find a lead I found I didn't want to always be talking shop. I mean there did have to be a line between on and of duty, didn't there? It wasn't possible to maintain that with Nightingale. He never seemed to be off duty. Without Lesley there to talk about normal stuff, like films or music, what you fancied doing with your day off or what you'd buy if you won the Lottery, everything had ended up being about work or magic. Which for me came down to the same thing. So I talked to Sandy about anything else I could think of. I found out a lot of random facts about Shetland in the process. Like it doesn't have a cinema, although one was opening soon. That the Scandinavian feel about the place was down to the fact that it had belonged to Norway until about five hundred years ago, and unlike much of the British Empire they'd not had to fight for it. They were given it as part of deal made over a royal wedding.

Jimmy Perez had been right about Sandy, he really did seem to know just about everything about Shetland. He had the sort of memory for facts that made me wonder just why he was still a constable. He had to be a good ten years older than me. There generally was a reason why somebody got stuck at constable, either they hadn't got the ability to rise to a higher role or they had no ambition to do so.

I couldn't see either applying to Sandy. There was always the possibility that he started late in the police. I'd gone to Hendon straight after sixth form. Maybe he'd worked for a few years first doing something else? I knew his accent was Scottish and I knew enough about Scottish accents to know the difference between Edinburgh and Glasgow, but that was about it. He seemed to know a lot about Shetland and Perez had said as much when he'd been assigned to them. So I decided to go with safe, “Have you been working here long?”

“As a detective only eight months, but I’ve been in the force for nearly ten years.”

Now that was odd. If you stayed on the beat that long it was because you liked it. Either that or he’d stuffed up his exams for detective constable about a dozen times. He didn’t seem like an idiot to me, so I was about to ask why the change of direction, when he told me.

“You’re wondering why, aren’t you?” he said and then sighed. “I might as well tell you. It’s common knowledge around the station. It was because my Grandmother died.” He looked down. “She was murdered.”

“That’s awful,” I said. What else was there to say? "I wouldn’t have thought there was much of that up here.”

“There isn’t,” he said and drank some more of his pint. “I never expected to see that sort of violence here. To find her…” He stopped, hand tight on the glass that I was worried it would break. “I’d never seen what I shotgun could do until then.”

And now I felt spectacularly crappy for bringing it up. Sandy seemed like a good bloke. A bit quiet and by the rules, but sound. Finding your granny done in with a shotgun was pretty damn hard core awful anywhere, even in the worst bits of Brixton or Tower Hamlets people didn’t go round wasting old ladies with a twelve bore.

Sandy sighed and pushed his drink away. "I expect things like that are common in London. Violent crime. Murders. You probably deal with them all the time."

"Only because there are more people," I said, still feeling awful for him. "It doesn't mean it's easier when you do. And never with family. Not like that."

He was quiet for a moment, then sighed again and got up. "I should go home. I'm not very good company tonight."

Now I'm the first to admit that I'm shit at dealing feelings and stuff, regardless of whether they are my own or other peoples. However, Sandy looked so unhappy I couldn't help but blame myself for bringing up the subject in the first place. I doubted he was likely to do much more than go and get drunk in private and it wasn't my business how he coped with it, but he'd been assigned to me and Nightingale, and if he wasn't in a fit state to work tomorrow and it screwed up the case as a result I was going to blame myself. Nightingale might too and I could do without that.

"Hey, wait! I shouldn't have asked," I called after him as I followed him out of the pub. "It's none of my business."

Sandy turned and then shoved his hands into his pockets against the cold and leant back against the wall. "It was a year ago yesterday. That I found her. It's not your fault. I thought if I worked, if I was busy..." He shook his head. "I think Perez was more worried about me being alone than working. He let me work back then too. Not on that case, but other on other things. I needed to, I don't do sitting around."

Now that I could understand, I didn't do waiting and letting stuff happen either. If anything like that had happened to somebody I knew I doubted I'd have been able not to look into it. That took some dedication to the rules be able to step back like that and not get involved. My earlier worries about him not being able separate work and his own opinions on Scottish independence seemed pretty well unfounded now.

I looked at the warm glow coming from the chip shop just down the road. It wasn't that long really since I'd eaten with Nightingale, but I'd not had any lunch and something to help mop up the two and bit pints I'd had wouldn't be a terrible idea. So we ended up getting fish and chips and sitting in the bus terminal waiting room out of the rain to eat them. We didn't talk any more about the case or about whether Sandy had been checking me out earlier, because if he had he certainly didn't seem to be doing it now and I didn't want to lead him on. Instead, Sandy told me more about Shetland, about how he'd grown up on an island just off the mainland and how he could never imagine living elsewhere. So I'd told him about London, about how different it was from Lerwick and how I couldn't see myself working anywhere else.

Eventually we had to call it a night as we both had to be up for work in the morning. Sandy headed off home which was apparently a flat somewhere nearby to where the ferry went over to the island of Bressay, where his family lived, and I went back to Sea View.

 

TBC Hopefully by Thursday 25th, but no later than Sunday 28th.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:
> 
> The Thule bar is a real pub in Lerwick and I drank in it a few times. I'm not sure what the bar normally has on tap now, but seeing all the local stuff as draft and very little seemed to be the norm when I was there (although that is getting on for 15 years back) Well the local beers and vodka. Lots vodka. Shetland is the only place I've been where the standard measures for vodka were doubles or triples. 
> 
> The murder of Sandy's gran, Mima Wilson, is how the first episode of the first series of Shetland starts, with him out on his beat as a uniformed police constable on his bicycle.
> 
> Sandy being gay is not canon. Him being single and there being no mention of any form of relationship past or present is. All the other main characters relationships have been shown - Perez is a widower with a teenage step-daughter who he shares custody with with her biological father. While Tosh's ex boyfriend, who dumped her not long before they were due to get married, still works in a hotel bar in Lerwick. In the first two episodes we meet pretty much all of Sandy's family (dad, aunts, uncles, grandfather, cousins etc) due to plot.
> 
> The relatively small population and number vehicles on Shetland is used as a plot point in of the Shetland episodes - when they are looking for a car. 
> 
> As to why Sandy was staring at Peter, well that will be revealed in time. All I'll say is that things are really not as they immediately seem.


	4. Chapter 4

Monday morning turned out to be just as wet, cold and grey as Sunday had been and I didn't want to get out bed anymore than I had then. I did though because I didn't want to be late and have Nightingale on at me about going out drinking when I had work in the morning. Not that I usually did, but he was always grumpy when he was ill, so playing it safe was my preferred strategy.

I got down to breakfast and looked around at all the new faces in the small dining room who'd arrived for Up Helly Aa and realised Nightingale wasn't there yet. I hoped he was having a lie in, he could certainly do with it. So I ate my breakfast, listened to what the other people staying there were talking about, which was mainly that they hoped the weather would be better tomorrow, and waited for him to show up. When he hadn't appeared by ten to eight I went up to his room and knocked on the door.

There wasn't a reply and I was about to knock again when he opened the door. Despite having lived at the Folly for the best part of three years seeing Nightingale in his pyjamas wasn't something that ever really happened, so I ended up staring and generally being relieved that my boss's idea of nightwear was old fashioned, stripy, blue and white flannel pyjamas like the guy in the toothpaste advert, rather than just pants.

He looked vaguely annoyed at the fact I'd woken him up and then not told him why. Then he looked back at clock in his room.  If Nightingale swore, I'd never heard him, but he looked like he wanted to right now. That and maybe hurl a tank busting size fireball at the offending alarm clock that had failed to wake him up. Personally I thought the clock had done him a favour as he didn't look like he should be getting up and going to work at all. My only consolation was that he didn't look worse than he had last night, so maybe that was a sign that the antibiotics would kick whatever bug he had out in short order.

"I am sorry, Peter," he said letting me into his room. "I can't remember the last time I overslept. I will be ready shortly."

That really didn't sound like the best of ideas as far as I was concerned. "Why don't I go in and find out if we've got any more leads and then I'll come get you when it's time to go to the Amenity Trust to look at their rocks?" I suggested. Then, seeing that he was trying to hide the fact that he was shivering, I added, "Or I could do that too and you could stay here and phone Greenwich and see if there's been anything happening around the museum? There's probably loads of leads to follow without you going to the station."

"While I appreciate what you are trying to do, it really isn't necessary. I am quite..." His protest that he was fine was cut short by a bout of coughing which ended up with him wheezing and generally looking like death warmed up.

"I think you should call in sick," I said as I handed him a glass of water from his bedside table. "I know you don't want to, but it might be for the best."

"Don't be ridiculous. I am quite capable of working. However, you might be right that my time might be best served away from the station," he said as he sat down on the end of his bed. "And while I would rather not send you out alone with Constable Wilson this is our third day here and we have no more idea what Trolhoulland doing than when we arrived. So please be careful and think before you act."

I still didn't get his dislike of Sandy. I was willing to put it down to the fact that he was under the weather and not liking having to work with somebody who we had to keep the magic side of our job secret from. If he kept on with it though, I knew it would get annoying pretty fast. I mean didn't he trust me to show any common sense at all? Or was that it? He didn't trust me anymore. I'd been the one who'd shown Lesley a werelight so maybe it was my fault that I'd set her heading down her current path. Didn't he think that I felt awful enough about that as it was? Feeling awful about stuff seemed to be my default state lately and I was getting pretty tired of it, but I didn't know how to make any of it any better.

"Of course I will," I said, suddenly glad at the idea of spending at least part of the day away from him. I felt bad about thinking it, but then I knew I'd feel bad if I stayed or if I got him to come with me. I hate no win situations. "I'll see you later at the Amenity Trust. If anything comes up I'll call you."

The rain had slowed to a steady drizzle by the time I left the B&B to walk to Lerwick Central. It only took about fifteen minutes and I was looking forward to a hot cup of tea or coffee when I got there, followed by a bit of sitting in the warm and dry phoning around and chasing up the DVLA about the landrover.

"No DCI Nightingale this morning?" Sandy asked, looking around.

I wasn't sure whether he was relieved about that or not, and if he was why? I didn't want to start getting suspicious about him simply because Nightingale was. "Not yet. He's going to check out the Amenity Trust's rocks. He'll join us later unless he finds something else he needs to check out." I decided not to mention that the appointment with them wasn't until eleven and that I hoped he was going to try to rest as much as he could until then.

"Right. Has he told us what were supposed to do until then?"

Nightingale rarely gave me anything more than a vague outline of what needed doing. I was lucky to have such a hands off boss really as I knew there were some who tried to micro-manage everything about their team and that would really piss me off after a while. That said sometimes it really did feel like he expected me to be a mind reader.

"Well," I began. "We need to see if the DVLA have got back to us and if they have if there's a way to narrow down the list. I thought maybe I'd have a check of the electoral roll as well to see if Trolhoulland's on it. I don't suppose you still have phonebooks with people's names in it, do you?"

"We're not that far behind the times unfortunately." There was a slight smile on Sandy's face as he added wryly, "Although you'd never know it. We even have this amazing thing called the internet."

He seemed happier than he had last night and I wondered how often he really got to talk to anybody. He seemed really friendly, but more than ninety percent of what he talked about was work or local trivia related. There was almost nothing about him, about what he liked or what he wanted. Whether it was because he was trying to be secretive about himself or whether he felt like people didn't want to know and he'd given up trying I wasn't sure. I didn't like either option. I couldn't imagine him being into anything dodgy, but I didn't want to think that he was secretly horribly lonely and being ignored by everybody unless they wanted something from him either. I suspected Nightingale would tell me that if I put as much thought into my studies I'd be ready to learn some new formae rather than keeping practicing the same few over and over again.

"I could get a map of the area around Griminsta and we could try to work out where Trolhoulland was running to," Sandy suggested. "He must have had a car parked nearby or his friend with the landrover did. There aren't many houses in that area and fewer roads. Perhaps we might be able to find somebody who saw something."

It sounded like a long shot, but we didn't have much else, so I said, "Right, you get the maps and I'll get some coffee."

Any plans immediately went out of window as we walked into the station. Sergeant Billy, his collie dog bounding about his feet, met us at the door. "There had been a report of a burning vehicle out on the Scousborough Road, near Bigton," he said, getting hold of the dog's collar and stopping it from leaping up at Sandy. "There's a fire crew in attendance. Perez and Tosh just left as there's reports of a body in the car. Only it's not a car it's a landrover. So this might be your case, they said to tell you. So you'd better be heading over there."

Well that was a crap start to the morning. If it was our mystery driver or Trolhoulland himself our only decent lead was going up in smoke. Literally.

"Thanks, Billy," Sandy said. Then turning to me said, "Do you want to call this in to your DCI?"

I should, I knew it. I also knew that it was terrible weather out and having Nightingale standing around in it would do him no favours at all. "I'll wait until we're sure it's connected," I said, feeling terribly disloyal about it. "His visit to the Amenity Trust might still be a better lead than this, I mean this might be nothing to do with it."

"Do you really think so?" Sandy said and we hurried out to his car.

I stopped and shook my head. "No, but it's worth making sure."

He gave me one of his slight smiles and said, "He's lucky to have somebody like you working with him."

"Like me?"

"Sensible and able to prioritise things. I can see why you got picked for a special unit," Sandy said as we pulled out of the station car park. "I expect there must have been some disappointed teams when you got picked for Social and Economic."

I laughed. I couldn't help it. "Not at all. It was Nightingale who wanted me. I was headed for doing everybody elses paperwork in Case Progression before he saw me."

The look Sandy gave me was priceless and for a second I wondered why, then I realised how it had sounded. Now I have my suspicions about what Nightingale was doing loitering about Covent Garden at one in the morning in his best suit, and it wasn't ghost hunting. But he'd never once done or said anything to me that suggested he wanted to do anything more with me than teach me magic and grumble about how nobody learns Latin these days.

"Not like that. I mean me and him, we aren't like that and that wasn't why he was interested in me," I said hurriedly, knowing the kind of rumours that would start to circulate if I didn't. "It was a case. I'd noticed something else about it and found another witness and a new line of enquiry. He thought I'd be better working with him than stuck behind a desk."

"Sorry, I...Sorry," Sandy said, keeping his eyes firmly on the less than busy road. "I shouldn't have assumed something like that. It wasn't a professional thing to assume about your Inspector or yourself."

I mumbled something along the lines of it was okay, I could have put it better. I was just glad I'd not mentioned that we lived together, now that would have been awkward to explain. We sat in silence for a while as we drove out of Lerwick and into the empty, tree-less moorland than seemed to cover most of Shetland.

The silence was almost as awkward as the conversation had been so eventually I said, "So this Up Helly Aa thing that's on tomorrow, you said it was a fire festival the other day. I don't suppose that has got anything to do with this?"

"Why would it?" he replied as he slowed the car to avoid half a dozen sheep that had wandered into the road. "This is a burnt out car. Up Helly Aa has in one form or another been going on for centuries without incident. It's only the longship we burn."

"Oh, right." I looked out of the car window at the line of hills that abruptly ended in massive cliffs and tried not to think about the Wicker Man film. The original that is. Not the Nicholas Cage one. That shouldn't be thought of either, but that was because it was two wasted hours of my life I'd never get back. But yeah, the whole Scottish Island, weird locals and ancient festival about burning things was actually a bit worrying. Maybe that was why Trolhoulland had picked this time of year to head up here, he was planning to do something at Up Helly Aa.

I decided not to share that idea with Sandy, as without going into the fact the rocks were magic and admitting I was getting my idea from classic horror films I had no reason to suggest it. I’d run it past Nightingale later. Maybe he would even know what the Wickerman without me explaining it, as there must have been some point in his life where popular culture was something he got.

The land rover had picked a pretty spectacular spot of coast to burn up on. Parked in a layby at the side of the road, there was a clear view up and down the coast for a couple of miles at least in either direction. One way there was the wide sweep of a sandy beach and in the other was a sand bar that linked a small island just off the coast to the mainland.

"That's Scousborough Sands down there," Sandy said as we walked over to where the fire crew were making their final checks of the land rover before declaring it was safe. "The other one is Saint Ninian's Isle. It's a shame it's winter, this area is popular with hikers and campers in the summer. Not much chance of witnesses at this time of year."

Perez and Tosh were already firmly in charge of the situation, directing a few uniformed officers to check the area and put out some cones so people weren't driving through the crime scene. The person who'd called it in, a middle aged woman wearing bright green rain mac, was sitting in one of the police cars, her dial-a-ride mini-bus parked behind it. There was no way I was going be able to get close enough to the landrover to check for vestigia on the off chance that the fire had had a magical origin, and I suspected that I'd have to wait until it was towed to where it would get thoroughly checked for the how, why and when it caught fire.

We were quickly drafted in to help find any witnesses. I didn't mind too much as it was, with the exception of checking for magic, the most useful thing I could be doing. There weren't many houses nearby and only two that were close enough that whoever lived there might have seen something. So Sandy and me took one and Perez went to the other taking a uniform with him, while Tosh stayed at the scene to liaise with the fire crew and wait for the coroner to arrive.

Our potential witness turned out to be an old lady who was busy feeding half a dozen chickens that milled around her front door. After checking the fact that we really were both police officers, she let us into her bungalow. Her name was Elsie Mowett and she was nearly eighty-seven as she told us about eighteen times before we sat down in her kitchen. After quick chat, as I couldn't really think of it as an interview, we'd found out she'd seen the smoke from the fire, but thought nothing more about it. Her reasoning being it was too wet to hang the washing out so it wasn't going to spoil anything, which therefore made it none of her business. She seemed genuine and tried to offer us tea and biscuits. We didn't have any in the end, but Sandy did end up changing the lightbulb in her living room for her, because she couldn't reach.

After thanking her and Sandy making sure there wasn't anything else she needed a hand with, we headed back to the burnt-out landrover and it decidedly crispy driver. Even though I'd not managed to get a good look at it I didn't think it was Trolhoulland. Even sitting down they appeared taller. Which brought me squarely back to the fact that this might be nothing to do with Trolhoulland at all.

As the body was in the driver's seat there was the possibility that maybe this was a tragic accident or even suicide. I didn't think this last option was very likely. Why choose self-immolation when there was a massive cliff not a hundred metres away that would have lead to a far faster and less painful end? Setting light to yourself was a statement, something that people did as a final, desperate way to get people to notice them or their cause. People didn't do it in a quiet layby, overlooking a picture postcard seascape. Or at least that was what we'd been taught at Hendon. There was something else going on here, I was sure of it.

I knew I was probably over stepping what somebody of my rank should be asking, but Perez wasn't back and Tosh was talking to the ambulance crew who'd been sent to collect the body. So I took the opportunity to talk to senior fire officer and get an idea of what he thought was going on.

"There will have to be a thorough investigation," he said, taking off his helmet, now he was away from the charred remains of the landrover and its unfortunate driver. "But I can tell you that the fire was fiercest in the front of the vehicle and was centred on the driver's seat. To get that kind of combustion an accelerant would have been needed."

"Deliberate?" I asked. "Or could it have been an unfortunate accident with cigarettes and bottle of vodka?"

The fireman shook his head.

"You don't think so?" Sandy asked, looking at where Tosh was organising photographs to be taken of the body before it was removed.

"A burn this fierce is more indicative of lighter fluid or petrol."

"But that's not all, is it?" I asked.

"No," he replied. "I've been putting out fires here abouts for nearly twenty years and this is the first time I've ever seen the driver's hands tied to the wheel."

I looked at where the body was still sitting in the driver's seat, the mouth in its charred face open in a silent scream. I knew that could have been down to heat doing things to the muscles. At least I hoped so, because otherwise it meant the poor sod had been alive when somebody had set fire to him. Even if this wasn't our case it would still affect us a we might lose our little incident room to a murder investigation. I left messages at the the B&B and with Sergeant Billy that if Nightingale came in he was to call me back. One day I'd really have to work on convincing him that having his own mobile phone was actually a good idea. Maybe this would actually be a good example of why.

Perez and the uniform arrived back shortly after I'd left the messages. The occupants of the house he'd been to hadn't seen anything either. The husband was away on the oil rigs and not due back until a week on Thursday, while the wife had been trying to get three children under ten ready for school.

Tosh was the one who provided us with our first solid bit of information. She'd called through to Billy and he'd made whatever calls he needed to and we'd got a hit on the number plate. The land rover was registered to Andrew Sholto, no previous convictions and who lived about ten miles down the coast from where we were at a place called Virkie. Fortunately or possibly unfortunately if it turned out to be a waste of time, Sholto's number plate had a B as its last letter. Just like the one that picked up Trolhoulland. It wasn't proof it was the same landrover, but it didn't rule it out either.

Without Nightingale there and with no quick way of contacting him I knew I'd have to make a decision about whether I was going to get more involved in this investigation. Luckily for me when I mentioned it to Perez he was happy enough for me to come with him and Tosh to check out Sholto's house. This left Sandy without anything to do as it really didn't need all four of us to go.  So before I headed out with Perez, I said, "Sandy, could you go back to the station and see if the DVLA got back to us and then find those maps of Griminsta? I can look at them with you later. And if Nightingale calls in tell him where I've gone."

"Alright," he said. "I've been thinking about yesterday, there might be a person or two I could ask about whether they'd seen Trolhoulland the other day. A bit of a long shot, but I could go and talk to them, if that would be okay with your DCI."

"I don't see why not?" I said. I was too busy wondering about what we'd find at Andrew Sholto's house to give too much thought about why Sandy hadn't mentioned those potential witnesses yesterday when we'd been there. Unless it was the sheep farmer with the quad bike and his special constable relation, in which case he had mentioned them and me and Nightingale hadn't given it a second thought. I'd give Nightingale a pass on that, but I should have thought about it.

With the body loaded into the ambulance and Sandy heading back to the station I went with Perez and Tosh to Sholto's house. It looked rather like a larger, neater version of Robbie Leask's place. A single storey, stone built cottage that looked like it had grown out of the landscape rather than been built into it. There was the question of whether he'd lived there alone and if he had whether we could assume that his body was the one found smouldering in his landrover.

That particular tricky question was neatly solved by the fact the door to the house had been left wide open and there was boss-eyed looking sheep currently stood in the doorway eating a pot plant. So doing our duty to see if Andrew Sholto was still inside, we shooed off the sheep. It bleated mournfully at us, then promptly pooped on the doormat and left.

A quick look around the hall and living room revealed that Mr Sholto would not have approved of incontinent sheep anywhere in his home. The place was organised with a capital O. Everything had its place, and for the most part the everything in question was books. There were books neatly stacked on just about every available surface and, when we looked at bit further, under them as well. Maybe we really were dealing with disgruntled archaeologists who'd been running a personal feud about the Pictish rocks after all. Except that didn't explain Trolhoulland's super sprint.

There were a few photographs on a seriously old looking Welsh dresser. One, a black and white print, was of a young man graduating from university. The next one, in faded colour this time, was of the same man. A little older than before, it was clearly a wedding photo and he smiled at the young woman beside outside a small, stone church by a windswept bay. The only other photograph was on a small table that had been left free of books, maps or leaflets. It was of Sholto's wife, taken a little earlier than the wedding photo, she had a late Fifties or early Sixties beehive hairdo that made her look bit like the woman in Breakfast at Tiffany's. There was also a bunch of fresh carnations in a glass vase next to it.

Now I might still be a lowly police constable, rather than a top rank detective, but everything about it said loss. Maybe that was it. Sholto had lost is wife recently, buried himself in books and final couldn't deal with it anymore. It would have worked as a theory apart from the fact his hands had been tied to the steering wheel. I mean there's making sure, but it just didn't fit. The guy must have been in his mid to late seventies going by the photos, and as much as I don't think relying on stereotypes is the way to go, he just didn't fit the profile of the sort of person that would douse themselves in accelerant and light a match. Not least was how could he do that with hands tied to the steering wheel? Everything pointed to murder, even if it didn't currently point to Trolhoulland. It was a pretty horrible way to kill somebody, to burn them alive, you had to hate them with level of passion that defied reason to do such a thing in my opinion.

Not that I had any evidence that Sholto, if it was Sholto had been alive at the time. Maybe he'd been killed in a different way and this was cover it up and destroy the evidence? Maybe they'd thought the material tying his hands to the wheel would burn away and it would look like the landrover fire happened by accident. There were too many questions that I was worried that we wouldn't get any answers to until it was too late to do any good with them.

Perez was checking out the kitchen and I was looking at the stacks of history books and carefully collated newspaper clippings about local history when Tosh shouted from the bedroom, "Sir, you'd better come and take a look at this!"

Sholto's bedroom was just as full of neatly stacked books as the rest of the house, but that wasn't the surprising thing. No, that went to the entire wall that was covered with maps of Shetland. The maps had about ten different colours of push pins stuck all over them. Some were linked together with lines of coloured thread, some stood alone, while others had reference numbers pinned to them. Although what the numbers corresponded with was a mystery. To the side of the maps was a writing desk which had open on it a couple of books about folklore and myths and legends of Shetland.

Some unfortunate uniforms would end up with cataloguing all this stuff, but that would take a while and if there was anything of interest, magically at least, it would probably get missed. I couldn't feel anything in the room, it was just an old guy's bedroom. The lack of any woman's clothing, even a neatly folded nightie on the pillow by Sholto's pyjamas seemed to bear out that the photo and vase was there as a kind of memorial.

Tosh looked at a few of the books picking them up, flicking through and then putting them back down. Perez was still studying the maps, a frown on his face. Hoping that the pins and notes didn't correspond to unsolved crimes or missing people or something that would get the case pulled away from me and Nightingale in short ordered, I went over to him. "What do you think we've got?" I asked.

"I was hoping that you might have an idea," Perez said, "I know some of this are historical sites." He pointed to a small island, then to somewhere down at the southern end off Shetland and finally to somewhere over on the south west coast. "The others might be the same. Sandy would probably know. Is your site on there?"

It took me a minute or two, but I eventually found Griminsta marked with a yellow push-pin and connected to another half dozen yellow pins with yellow thread, and also to some blue pins with red thread. Yeah, Sholto had obviously been working something out about these places, connections between them, but what completely baffled me.

"It's on there," I said, wondering what Perez would say to that. "But I don't know why."

He ran his hands through his hair before answering, leaving it sticking up and looking a lot like a surprised ginger hedgehog. "I think from now on we should run this as a joint investigation. I will need to talk to DCI Nightingale about how he wants to play it, I don't want to start treading on toes, but murder has to come first over theft, even if that might be part of the motive."

It wasn't an ideal solution, but under the circumstances it was the best we could hope for, so I said I'd try to call Nightingale and get him to get in contact.

It took rather longer to do that than I'd expected and it was shortly after three in the afternoon when I managed to get him on the phone. Much to my surprise he told me he already knew and to keep working on the Sholto case, as he'd got a lead of his own and that he'd see me later when he'd want a full account of what was happening. No indication of what it was, where he was going, how he was getting there or when to worry if he wasn't back. Surprised, and after I put down the phone, a little annoyed at how off hand he'd been with me, I went to find Sandy and see where his possible leads had taken him.

It only took me a couple of minutes of talking to Sandy to put me in an even worse mood. Nightingale had chosen to call Sandy instead of me, had spoken to him about his leads and then completely failed to mention it to me so now I looked like an idiot for not knowing. Okay, that wasn't exactly  true and Sandy didn't seem to mind going over all the stuff he'd told Nightingale, but it still felt uncomfortably like Nightingale didn't trust me anymore. I wanted to put it all down to him being ill, but I felt like I was lying to myself, and I wondered how long I could go on making excuses for him. Part of me wanted not to go down that road in the first place. The other, who saw how happy his mum and dad still were because she could make excuses, to herself at least, about his past drug taking, said sometimes making those excuses and ignoring the truth worked out for the best. There was no way I should have been comparing me and Nightingale to my parents marriage, but bizarrely it somehow seemed to fit.

Sandy's leads had turned up nothing definitive, although a farmer had said he'd seen a landrover on a road near to Griminsta at about the right time did point to Trolhoulland having continued contact with the person, presumably Sholto, who'd got him from the car park. Through the afternoon we received more information on Andrew Sholto. He'd been a seventy two year old retired English teacher, who'd worked in the same comprehensive over the road from Belle Gillespie's car park. He'd lost his wife three years ago and had no family, apart from an older sister who'd emigrated to Australia in the mid Seventies, but nobody knew if she was still alive. There was nothing to suggest that he had ever been involved in anything dodgy, he'd never had so much as a parking ticket.

The coroner would have to fly in from Aberdeen to do the autopsy on the body, but the preliminary checks done by staff at the hospital in Lerwick suggested that the body was that of Andrew Sholto and that he had been alive when the fire was lit. There was a pretty sombre mood in the station for the rest of the evening after that revelation. We kept on working, trying to find out what we could about Sholto. Tosh went out with a group of uniforms to talk to the occupants of the dozen or so houses that could reasonably be called Sholto's neighbours, while Perez called contacts from Sholto's address book and tried to talk to as many of his old teaching colleagues as possible.

Me and Sandy got to work on all the places listed on the map. By and large they were archaeological sites, mostly prehistoric, Iron Age and earlier, a few seemed to have legends associated with them or some bit of folklore. There was nothing that seemed relevant to the case and eventually we came to the conclusion that Sholto's research could have been for a book. It didn't rule out that maybe Sholto had stumbled across something during the course of his research that had brought him into contact with Trolhoulland and had eventually given somebody the motive for murder.

Dinner was eaten at the station and we continued working well into the evening, trying to get something positive to report by the time the local paper was all over it in the morning. Nothing said headline news to a local paper like the savage murder of a well respected retired teacher.

It was after ten when Sandy drove me back to the B&B still with nothing useful to report and the promise that he'd pick me and Nightingale up at seven the next morning. I thanked him and then headed up to my room. As I past Nightingale's door I thought about knocking and seeing if he wanted to listen to what I'd found out, but after listening for a moment outside and hearing snoring, I decided not to wake him.

I went to bed hoping that tomorrow would bring us closer to closing the case, and that hopefully with a resolution in sight there'd an improvement in Nightingale's attitude. I'd think up a reason why I'd waited until morning to give him a rundown of the case when I finally saw him. One that didn't include mentioning the snoring part: There was no way I was going to be the one to point out that he sounded like somebody sawing wood when he had a cold.

 

TBC.  
Next part hopefully on Thursday 2nd October, but no later than Sunday the 5th.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN.  
> Things will start to get clearer from the next part about what is going on, what Nightingale is up to and why he's being like he is with Sandy and Peter. 
> 
> As before most of the places mentioned as real locations in Shetland. Scousborough Sands and St Ninians's Isle really do look nice in the sun, and Bigton and Virke are both real villages. Shetland Amenity Trust is in charge of the archaeology on Shetland. 
> 
> Needing to get a coroner in from Aberdeen to work on a murder case is something that happens in the series. Whether this is true of real police procedure in Shetland I don't know, but as it is canon for Shetland the series, so I went with it. 
> 
> You will probably have noticed that the chapter count has gone from 5 to 7, this is purely down to the fact that when I edit things they have a habit of getting about 25% longer than before I started, rather than the fact that I have no idea where the story is going. I do, and it is pretty much done (I hand write on paper and type up) bar the editing. It shouldn't increase to more than 7 parts, well okay 7 and maybe an epilogue type thing.


	5. Chapter 5

Nightingale was already in the breakfast room at the B&B when I got there and he looked better than he'd done since we'd caught the St Clair back on Friday. He even talked about the case with me, well as much as we could when we were surrounded by other people who were staying at Sea View. Mainly he wanted the low down on all I'd been doing, although he did tell me that he'd seen and subsequently ruled out the rocks held by the Shetland Amenity Trust.

We walked up to the station before eight, with Nightingale giving the rather surreal sight of half a dozen Vikings sheltering out of the drizzle inside a coffee shop a baffled look. It really did look like most of the island had packed itself into Lerwick and there was what could only really be called a carnival atmosphere about the place.

There were already uniforms out on the street making sure everything was organised and Sandy told us once we'd arrived at the station that Up Helly Aa would officially start at eight thirty and continue until the pubs closed in the early hours of the following morning. The main processions were well organised and the Jarls as they were called worked on their costumes for about two years before they took part in what was generally a once in a lifetime opportunity. In the afternoon there would also be the children's procession. The part that called for the most policing wouldn't be until after seven that evening when the crowds really started to gather in ernest for the procession which would involve about nine hundred burning torches and possibly some lit tar barrels.

I wondered if they had the same kind of health and safety laws here as they did in London and if they did whether they just ignored them. I couldn't see any of the borough councils in London going for something like this or for it being a free for all,  where the streets would be packed with as many people as they could hold. There hadn't ever been any real trouble in its hundred plus year history Sandy told us proudly, usually it was just a few fights late on in the evening between people who'd had a bit too much to drink.

After that me, Nightingale and Sandy headed over to where Sholto's burnt out land rover had been put, having been gone over by a fire officer the previous afternoon and now was being given the full CSI treatment. The real CSI that is, not the American TV ones who have super fast machines that probably also make you coffee and empty the office bin while you're not looking. So we probably wouldn't be looking at getting any results about what kind of accelerant had been used until some time next week if we were lucky.

We read through the preliminary report, found that it pretty much told us what we already knew and then, after a little bit of persuasive talking from Nightingale, we actually got to see the land rover. It smelt like all burnt cars do, a mixture of melted rubber and plastic and scorched metal. There was something there, some trace of vestigia that let us know that we weren't entirely wrong in having our suspicion that there was some magical element in this somewhere. We couldn't get much else from it, the dousing with water and foam from the fire brigade and succession of crime scene techs going over it had wiped most traces out.

From there we went over to Sholto's house to meet up with some more crime scene techs and the uniforms who'd been unlucky enough to end up with book packing and cataloging duty rather than policing what sounded like one hell of a party that was currently happening in Lerwick. This was the boring part of police work. The going from place to place part, looking at everything and hoping that something stood out and you could make a connection that would in turn point you in the right direction and give you the right sort of questions to ask when you got there.

Nightingale spent most of the time at Sholto's house asking Sandy about places Sholto had marked out on his map. Sandy had looked baffled and a bit worried about it, although whether it was because the map with its web of pins and string was seriously weird or if it was down to Nightingale questioning everything he said at least three times each I wasn't sure. Even when Nightingale wasn't talking to him he watching him intently, although he stopped when I looked, like he didn't want me to see him looking. It was weird, but I decided it was an improvement on his previous attitude, so I decided it was a good sign.

We stopped of for lunch out near Sholto's house after Sandy pointed out that Lerwick would be packed and we'd be lucky to find anywhere that wasn't either sold out or booked out. So after a quick break we headed back into Lerwick. Sandy dropped us at the hospital where Perez was waiting for the coroner to finish up with Shollto's autopsy, and then he headed back to the station to see how things were going with Up Helly Aa.

The coroner, Dr Margaret Montrose who'd flown out from Aberdeen the previous evening, was a no nonsense looking woman in her early forties. With auburn hair pulled back in a bun and glasses perched on the end of her nose. It made her look a bit like a teacher I'd had back in Primary school. I had to stop myself from answering her 'Yes, Mrs Mansell' when she asked us not to touch the body.

She gave Nightingale a rather disapproving look as he started coughing, or at least until he'd managed to retrieved a handkerchief. The cough was a bit better than it had been. He was still coughing fairly frequently, but it didn't sound as painful as it had and he'd not started wheezing afterwards, so I was hopeful that he was over the worse of it now. Maybe that was why he was in a better mood.

Sholto didn't look any better from having been cut open and poked about, and the smell in the morgue was far from pleasant. It didn't seem to bother Nightingale, although Perez did suggest that if there was an office that they could use to go over her findings it would be preferred. Montrose said there wasn't, and that now she'd finished she like to be able to get her flight back to Aberdeen that evening.

Nightingale used the opportunity to move over to Sholto's body and check for anything that might suggest that there was something magical in how he had met his horrible end. After a minute or two he moved away. "If you look," Nightingale said quietly as Montrose started to give her findings to Perez. "Don't look too closely or for too long."

Like I wasn't going to look. The land rover had been unpleasant, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. After what I'd seen Henry Pyke do to people and bit that I'd seen in the strip club of Dr Moreau it was going to take a lot to freak me out.

It was amazing really how easy it had become to check for vestigia, I thought as I stood next to the remains of Sholto. Straight away I could feel an after-image of heat, it was sort of shimmery like the distortion you got over metal roofs on really hot days. Fear lingered too, that was a jagged kind of feeling and something that I didn't want to linger on. There was the smell of burnt meat too. I closed my eyes, really wishing that I'd not had a bacon sandwich little more than an hour ago. I was determined that I wasn't going to disgrace myself by acting like it was first dead body I'd been around, so I tried to focus a bit more on the weirdly salty and damp part of the vestigia that seemed to be hiding beneath the rest.

Not just damp, I realised as I tried to get a better sense of it, but wet. Then it hit me. Cold sea water rushing over me, the force of it driving me under, taking me down to the ocean depths where I'd drown. I tried to open my eyes again, but they wouldn't move. Okay, time to panic I decide, only I found I couldn't move either or speak.

Somebody grabbed my arm and pulled me from the room and made me sit down on a chair in the corridor. I felt some other energy there, Nightingale, I was sure. Then just as suddenly as the sense of water had hit me it was gone and I could breath again. Opening my eyes I saw a rather worried looking Perez and very annoyed looking Nightingale.

At least I thought it was annoyance, until he spoke, "I told you not to get too close," Nightingale said, sounding far more scared than angry.

I think I would have preferred him to just be annoyed at me, as scared meant that I'd actually been in danger. It also meant I'd get a thorough talking to later about it, because with Nightingale concern always seemed to equaling a tonne more study and practice for me. He seemed to think that learning stuff would solve everything. Okay it'd help, but just occasionally would it have killed him to actually ask me if I was okay, rather than treating me like a naughty kid? "I didn't think it would be so bad," I said, hating that my voice wasn't steady yet.

"Do you think I give you advice for fun?" Nightingale said. "Now wait here while I talk to Dr Montrose, and try not to get into any more trouble."

I wanted to snap something back at him, preferably something witty and memorable that would make me feel better about it, but I couldn't think of anything, so I decided that I'd be better off waiting until we didn't have an audience. "Alright, sir."

Perez had watched the whole exchange with a deepening frown. When Nightingale had gone he turned to me and said, "Wait there." Then he walked off as well and I was left alone. I couldn't work out whether I was glad of it or not.

I'd still not worked it worked it out when a minute or so later Perez returned and sat down next to me. "You'll be alright, lad," he said handing me a cardboard cup of awful vending machine coffee. "It wasn't a pretty sight in there. I can't imagine you see many bodies working chasing up stolen antiques and the like."

I shook my head, knowing it was a lie. I'd seen far too many bodies in the last couple of years, more than I'd ever thought I would and I didn't think I was ever going to get to the point where it didn't bother me at least a little bit. I still felt cold and now I felt pretty stupid as well. Nightingale had tried to warn me and I'd not listened to him. What if it had been some kind of magic trap? I could have shorted out the power in the hospital. People could have died. But if it had been a trap why hadn't he told me not to look at all? Why risk me doing it at all? Had he not realised exactly what it would do?

"I know it's not my place, but is he always like that?" Perez stopped and looked at where Nightingale was still talking to Montrose. "There's being in charge of junior officers and giving them a push when they need it and then there's bullying them. And one of those isn't allowed."

"It's not like that," I said, hating how it sounded. Nightingale wasn't like that and I wasn't the sort of person to stand for it. I could see that Perez didn't believe me, but there was no point making an issue of it. Repeatedly telling somebody something wasn't a thing was the fastest way to convince them that it really was.

Thankfully he didn't say any more about it and Nightingale soon reappeared, and handed a folder containing the autopsy report to Perez. We didn't actually find out anything that useful in the end apart from the fact that it had been murder. Sholto had been a guy in his early seventies, in reasonable health although he was on medication for high cholesterol. He'd been alive at the time he'd been set on fire, but Montrose suspected that he might have been drugged as there wasn't any sign of him trying to get out of the vehicle. She'd have to send away for a tox screen to find out if and what it had been and that would take a few days.

Nightingale had said nothing to either me or Perez on the short drive back to the station or when we got out of the car, and to say I was pretty pissed off by now would have been an understatement. I'd not come across vestigia that had been like that before, that had pulled me right in. It had been frightening and that it had scared Nightingale at the time left in little doubt that if I'd remained by the body that I might very well have been joining it on my own stainless steel table ready to be sliced open and prodded.

I wanted to talk to Nightingale about it, to understand what had happened and how to avoid it in future and I was actually relieved when he didn't follow Perez into the station. That relief lasted about two seconds as the first thing that he said to me was, "What were you thinking, Peter? I told you not to look too closely Sholto."

"That I wanted to know what had happened. That I needed to look for clues. That...oh I don't know... that I'm a police officer who should be trusted to do his job." I pretty much regretted it the second I'd said it as being angry and sarcastic at Nightingale rarely resulted in me winning the argument. Okay, nothing really ever resulted in me winning the argument, but this was guaranteed to make me lose faster. "If you don't trust me to do my job, just say so."

"What a ridiculous thing to say, of course I trust you."

It sounded like a verbal version of a pat on the head and after how things had been recently I found that I wasn't willing to let it slide, make a joke of it or make any more excuses for him. "Yeah, well you've got an odd way of showing it," I said. If he wanted an argument he was going to get one. "You want me to learn, well I'm trying, but you've got to let me make my own mistakes sometimes. How else am I going to learn?"

"Mistakes can kill you. You can't learn anything if you're dead," Nightingale said. Looking weary he sat down on the wall next to me. "You cannot expect me to stand by and let something like that happen to you. I would never forgive myself. You might not believe it, Peter, but do worry about you. You're too reckless sometimes, over confident. I worry that I've not taught you enough, that if..."

Whatever he was working up to telling me was lost as Sandy hurried over to us, and Nightingale clammed up.

"Are you okay?" Sandy asked me. "I heard you had a bit turn at the hospital. Are you going to be alright to work Up Helly Aa?"

"Constable Grant is quite well, thank you for your concern," Nightingale said before I had a chance to say anything. "Is there going to be a briefing about tonight?"

"Yes. Yes, sir," Sandy said, rapidly retreating back to professional blandness, although he gave me a pitying look that I took to mean he didn't think much of Nightingale as my DCI. "I came to find you to see if you wanted to attend."

"Very good," Nightingale said, getting off the wall. "I suggest you show us where it is."

I was torn between being annoyed with Nightingale for being so pissy towards Sandy and really worried about what he'd been trying to tell me before we'd been interrupted. So I decided not to say anything and followed them inside.

Nightingale decided that we would be present throughout the evening, but free to move amongst the crowds to see if we could spot Trolhoulland. Perez didn't seem convinced by it, but didn't argue the point. He just made sure we knew that he was still in charge of Sandy and that for tonight he'd be following the main procession, making sure people didn't get to close to the fires.

It was dry and barely above freezing when we left the station for the five minute walk down to the Esplanade where the Up Helly Aa celebrations would be concentrated. Nightingale's one concession to the fact that it was bloody freezing was a hat. I'd never really seen him in a hat before, which kind of confused me now I thought about it. He'd grown up in a time where people never left the house without one, and I wondered if he'd been seen as daring or something for not having one back then or whether he'd given up on them decades later than anybody else. The hat, which I suspected he must have bought yesterday while he'd been doing whatever it was he'd been doing, looked kind of like what a ship or submarine captain might have worn about seventy years ago.

Had he bought it because he liked it? Or had all the others been knitted things with bobbles, tassels or earflaps and this was the least awful option? I doubted he'd tell me either way. I had to admit it did suit him, and with his dark overcoat hiding his suit it made him look like something out of a 40s Noir film.

There is something about fire on a cold night. Something that has probably stuck in people's mind ever since the first caveman decided that the hot, bright stuff was worth having around. We saw Sandy a few times as we mingled with the crowd trying to see Trolhoulland or anybody else doing anything they shouldn't be, like magic. He was walking with other officers on duty, giving direction and advice to tourists and generally Mr Helpful. Then there was an announcement and all the street lights were dimmed and all the torches were lit.

We couldn't see Sandy from where we were, but I knew that he'd be in him place out on the edge of the procession, making sure the crowds wedged into the narrow streets gave the vikings enough room to get through. I wondered if he'd ever taken part in it, dressed up as a viking. He'd have been a pretty small viking as he wasn't much more than five eight and was what could be best be called wiry. He didn't look like he'd have any more luck than I would in growing a massive beard like most of the huge, hairy wannabe norsemen currently singing loudly around us. Did you have to put your name down for it or were people picked at random? I'd have to ask him in the morning I decided.

Singing and blowing horns as they made their way through the streets meant everything moved pretty slowly, although it seemed to be planned to be like that and there didn't seem to be anybody complaining about delays. So me and Nightingale went with it. The amount of fire burning all arounds meant that it wasn't too cold to be standing about for a change. The route doubled back on itself a couple of times, making sure it passed all the old buildings in the town centre, but eventually everybody made their way to the King George V playing fields at the edge of Lerwick. The crowds that had kept pace with the front of the parade started to drop back and line up around the fence at the edge of the playing fields.

Nightingale gave me a look that suggested he wasn't sure what was happening or whether this should be happening. I didn't either, but I was saved from having to admit it by Sandy appearing next to us.

"Only Jarl Squads past this point," Sandy said, as he started directing people to spread out along the fence line. "Everybody else watches from here. Photographers for the Lerwick times, please make your way to the area by the sports pitches."

There were some grumbles this time, mostly I guessed from tourists who'd expected to be able to get up close to this last bit of it, but on the whole everybody seemed to know this was how it happened. I could see a fire crew on standby at the edge of the field, standing around their appliance, probably getting the best view of anybody who wasn't actually part of Jarl Squads.

Once the Jarl Squads were all inside the playing field, Sandy and a couple of other officers made sure the the gate was pulled shut. Not locked, just in case something went wrong and they needed to send in an ambulance or something, but as a reminder that people were expected to wait outside.

With Sandy at the gate, me and Nightingale went to find a spot where we could see what was going on. Not that I was sure what we could do if Trolhoulland started something inside the playing fields, it wasn't like we could get in without drawing a load of attention to ourselves. The burning of the longship started with the most important group called the Guizer Jarls formed a circle around the boat. It was pretty impressive. I mean nine hundred massive blokes dressed as vikings each hurling a flaming cricket bat sized lump of wood onto a proper carved dragon headed longship wasn't likely to be anything else. They might do it every year, but it really gave you a feeling of seeing something that hadn't been around for a thousand years.

Having to keep a look out for Trolhoulland did spoil it a bit, and part of me was glad that he'd not shown up and spoiled things. Okay it did mean we had even less idea what he might be planning, but somehow it seemed worth it to watch it. I wasn't sure Nightingale saw it that way and there was something stoney faced about him as he watched it burn.

Eventually all the Jarls had thrown their torches and the ship had gone from burning brightly to being a red glow in the middle of the grass. People had started to drift away, back to the pubs and parties and out of the cold and now increasingly damp night. Sandy left once the crowd had halved, he was on making sure drunk people didn't cause trouble or fall in sea duty.

Nightingale continued to watch the burning ship like he somehow expected Trolhoulland to jump from it and cause chaos. He didn't. Nothing happened at all apart from it starting to rain.

"Come on, Sir," I said eventually. "I don't think Trolhoulland is going to show up. There's not much left to show up for." Nearly everybody had left Recreation area and gone in search of somewhere that was dry and had beer. Personally I thought it would have been great to have joined them. I didn't think Nightingale would go for it and he was starting to cough and shiver more now that we were just stood around in the damp and cold.

"Then why did Trolhoulland choose this time of year?" Nightingale said. "There has to be something. Something we've missed."

"I don't think we're going to find it out here," I said. "Why don't we got back to the B&B, get a hot drink and work out what to do?"

I actually got a smile for that. "I believe that might be for the best, Peter."

I called the station to make sure Perez wasn't expecting us back in for a debriefing or something. It turned out he wasn't, so we headed back thought the noisy and bright streets of Lerwick to Sea View.

"Peter, before we discuss the case there is something else I need to speak with you about," Nightingale said once we were in his room and couldn't be overheard.

Now that didn't sound good at all. I suspected that it was going to be about me not following instructions earlier at the autopsy. It would be a sucky way to end the evening, but there was no point delaying it, so I said, "Yeah, sure."

"Don't look so worried. I'm feeling much better than I was," he said. There was something more hesitant in his voice when he spoke again. "I've been thinking about Constable Wilson today. You have spent more time with him both on and off duty than I, and I would like your honest opinion of him."

Okay now that really wasn't what I'd expected. Nightingale didn't usually do uncertain and most of the time he didn't do second opinions either. He'd been weird with Sandy since we'd got here. I frowned. It hadn't been since we arrived, it was since we'd spent the day with Sandy at Griminsta. Sandy had had been helpful, full of information and quietly concerned about Nightingale when he'd been ill, but hadn't made a big deal of it. He was kind of like the ideal old fashioned copper. I managed to stop myself staring at Nightingale as my over-tired brain tried to make sense of it and up with the idea that maybe be fancied Sandy. Call it sleep deprivation as I'd only got about five hours sleep the previous night and today had been up since six and it was now past midnight, but made a weird kind of sense. Which just left me desperately trying to think of what the hell to say. I mean it's not every day that your hundred and fourteen year old boss asks whether a colleague fancies him.

"Well he's nice," I began. "A bit old fashioned I think about some things, but that might work in your favour. Well if you want to tell him about your thing. I mean if it's a long term thing you'd have to. " I thought about mentioning that he'd got pretty nice legs from all the cycling he used to do and still did when he found time, but it felt a bit weird going into that kind of detail. So I went with, "I'm pretty sure he's not seeing anybody. So I think you might be in with a cha..." I stopped as Nightingale was giving me a horrified look.

"I meant professionally, as if you were telling be about a suspect or a witness."

"Oh." I looked at the floor, half hoping that it would open up and spare me the embarrassment of the rest of the conversation.

"Indeed." There was something final in Nightingale's voice that, much to my relief, said 'let's never speak of this again.'

"Right. Okay, right." I still couldn't quite look at him. "Well he seems to know his job. He knows the area and he's been an officer for ten years or so. He's nice, maybe a bit lonely, but he really seems to like helping people."

Nightingale had nodded at most things, and then said, "You don't think he is too knowledgable about certain things?"

"Like what?" I doubted he meant the fact Sandy was a member of the local real ale society or knew a tonne of stuff about bicycle racing and repairs.

"I went to see Robert Leask again yesterday," Nightingale said, completely failing to answer my question. "From there I decided that I needed to take a closer look at Constable Wilson's cases. I find it hard to believe that he has happened to be in the right place at the right time so consistently throughout his career. And then there is the matter of the worryingly frequent anonymous witnesses that have given him the information that lead him to realise he needed to be in those places."

At that moment I decided that the whole Nightingale fancying Sandy thing would have been preferable to this. I couldn't believe Sandy was anything other than what he seemed. "Do you really think Sandy's is involved in something?"

"I saw how he was looking at you at Griminsta," Nightingale said changing the subject again.

Whether or not he'd intended it to come across a jealous it did. Which was plainly ridiculous as Nightingale didn't think of me like that. Honestly since what had happened with Lesley he'd been on my case about the stupidest of things, pushing me to study more and telling me to work harder. Once I had looked forwards to the practical demonstrations with him and dreaded the terminally dull books in Greek and Latin, but it had slowly got to the point where it all had come to feel the same. Did he think that I might hook up with Sandy myself? That I'd chuck in my apprenticeship and leave my family and get a transfer to Shetland? Or that I'd abandon him and the Folly without a second thought?

"There's nothing going on between me and Sandy," I said, annoyed that he could be so petty or insecure about the idea somebody might like me. He'd been as bad about Simone. Okay, maybe not a good example all things considered. "And even if it were I don't see that it's any of your business."

"If it compromises the investigation it is," he snapped back at me. "If it was a matter purely of a romantic nature I would not interfere or presume to tell you who you may or may not be with."

"Then what is it?" I said finally losing my temper with him. "Why don't you tell me what the hell I've done wrong? Because I haven't got the faintest idea what it is."

"You haven't done anything wrong," he said, sounding vaguely annoyed that I'd come to that conclusion. "Constable Wilson is another matter. I believe he is aware of magic. The chances of it being a self cultivated latent ability is vanishingly small. So that leaves the question of who trained him and how much does he know."

You know that sick feeling like the ground had just fallen away beneath your feet, but how you know it's still preferable to the how you're going to be feeling when reality finally hits? I was there and it felt like a place I'd ended up far too many times recently. "Are you sure?"

"I spent the greater part of yesterday looking for another explanation," Nightingale said. "I hadn't wished to accuse him of something baselessly. But after finding that Constable Wilson actually asked to be assigned to us rather than it purely being down to DI Perez picking his most suitable officer I can't help but have misgivings about his intentions regarding this case."

I sat down on the end of Nightingale's bed. I felt abysmally tired and I knew it was nothing to do with the late night. How had I not seen there was something going on? What was it lately with blonde coppers seeing me as an easy target? Did I have soft touch written on my head or something?

I felt the bed dip beside me, and a moment later Nightingale said, "Peter, are you alright?"

I wasn't. But there was no way I was admitting it. Why had I got such crap judgement of people? I wondered. Maybe I should just give up letting anybody get close at all. Simone, Lesley and now Sandy. I was a policeman, I was supposed to be a suspicious bastard, not a gullible fool.

"Peter?"

"I'm fine," I said, not wanting to talk about it. "I'm just tired. I should go to bed. Lots to do tomorrow if you're right."

Nightingale gave an irritated sigh. "You aren't." I was about to tell him he was wrong and beat a hasty retreat back to my room when he added rather more quietly. "Neither of us are."

"Sir?" I tried to stop all the worst case scenarios running through my mind and failed miserably. Was he feeling worse? Had he been lying before when he'd said it was just something minor? What if he was really ill? What if that was why he'd been pushing me learn more and faster? not because he was worried that there would an escalation of things between us and Faceless, but because he was worried he wouldn't be able to give me the full ten years of apprenticeship.

Nightingale got up and walked over to the window. "I had hoped to avoid having this conversation and that things would right themselves given enough time. This does not seem to be the case."

"Maybe things will be better in the morning," I said. I didn't believe it for a minute. The morning would come with it whole new set of horribleness, which would include having to ask Sandy whose side he was on.

"I failed Lesley and I fear I am failing you too," Nightingale said, still looking out the window. "I had never seen myself as a teacher, nor was I ever academically minded. Magic was a tool that enabled me to do my job. I had never believed I would take an apprentice and magic fading from the world cemented that thought. However, the night I saw you I saw such potential there that I did not want it to go to waste. The world is changing and with magic returning I thought to regain something that had been lost."

"I thought you didn't trust me any more," I said. It might not have been the best time to mention it, but if Nightingale wanted to clear the air between us then I decided that I might as well do the same.

"I think my own judgement is far more in question than yours," he replied sadly. "When Lesley came to the Folly and proved to be such an apt pupil I couldn't have been happier. I had initially been wary of taking on a second apprentice. In the past to train more than two in a lifetime was unusual, to have two simultaneously was virtually unheard of and certainly when both were in their early stages of training."

"So why?" It wasn't like I'd asked him to train Lesley as well, although I suppose I had kind of forced his hand by showing her how to do the werelight.

"The misguided belief that things could be as they once were. You and Lesley are both young, and I believed likely to train apprentices of your own one day. Had had hopes that once you had finished your apprenticeship that young Miss Kamara would be mature enough to begin training. That perhaps a school, like I had attended as a boy might once again..." He stopped, then spent a good half minute coughing, before saying. "I allowed myself to believe that Lesley was a more apt pupil and that I was gaining in skill from teaching you both."

"If it helps I think our instructors at Hendon thought the same thing," I said. "I mean she got picked for murder squad and they thought the best I could do was fill in forms for better coppers."

"That others were foolish enough to discount your abilities and potential hardly negates the fact that I failed to realise that Lesley had another master, and that in that negligence I placed you in very grave danger."

He sounded properly upset by it and I seriously wondered if I should try to give him a hug or something. I mean I'd known Lesley for far longer than he had, if anybody should have noticed something it should have been me. "I don't think it's your fault, sir," I said, deciding that standing close might be enough. "Sometimes things just happen and we've just got to get on with it. What else can you do?"

"What else indeed?" he said wearily. "That there is no alternative but to somehow carry on doesn't make such things easier bear. I cannot tell you that it becomes easier with age, rather that it all becomes wearily familiar and mundane."

It wasn't what I wanted to hear, but I supposed getting the truth had to count for something. "So what do we going to do?"

"We will talk to Constable Wilson together tomorrow," Nightingale said finally turning back from the window to face me. "And while I fear that the outcome of such a conversation will bring difficult decisions, I know that he has been your friend so I promise that I will hear him out."

"Thank you," I said, because I couldn't think of anything else to say. It didn't make me feel any better and I doubt it did Nightingale any good either.

He nodded. "Now we both need to rest. I expect to see you at breakfast at seven thirty."

"Yes, sir," I replied, knowing that the conversation had definitely ended. I still felt rotten about the whole thing and from look of him Nightingale didn't feel any better about it either. I wondered what we'd really achieved from it. In the end I decided the fact that he didn't actually think I was an idiot and that he wasn't intentionally being horrible to me was it.

It didn't help make me feel any better about had to do in the morning and I lay in bed in the dark listening to Up Helly Aa partygoers making their way home in the way that drunk people do when they think they are being quiet, but are actually making enough noise to wake the whole street. Before finally, as the clock dimly moved on to two am the wind and rain started battering into the windows, I fell asleep.

 

TBC

 

A/N  
Sorry for the massive delay. Real life sadly gets in the way of getting fun stuff like fic writing. I'm hoping to get the next part up on Sunday.

So there are some answers to why Nightingale is being so off with Peter. As to what Sandy is up to things will be revealed shortly. All will say is that not everything is what it seems.

The information about Up Helly Aa is taken from the Up Helly Aa official website, as while I worked in Shetland for a while I was never there at the right time of year - the last Tuesday in January - to see Up Helly Aa for myself.


	6. Chapter 6

There was no point dragging things out, but Nightingale didn't want to confront Sandy at the station and I did agree with him on that. What I didn't like was having to talk to Sandy like everything was okay, but Nightingale was right, if we asked him the sort of questions that we needed to we would, at best, be considered nuts by Sandy's colleagues. At worst we might end up with the kind of confrontation were there's enough magic flying about to flatten buildings and results in even more questions and paperwork.

So we did what we needed to do at the station, Nightingale talked to Perez about the case, while me and Sandy looked through some of the boxes of books that had come from Sholto's house. After a good amount of looking I realised that there had to be something missing from the whole map and string set up. All the places on the map had reference numbers on them and we'd assumed at first that the references had referred to books in his collection, but nothing seemed to fit. No, there had to be another book, probably something hand written as Sholto didn't seemed to have done computers any more than Nightingale did and there had been no sigh of a typewriter. If we'd not checked the house for magic I'd have been suspicious that was the reason. It seemed to be purely down to the fact that Sholto, like a lot of people well past retirement age, didn't go in for technology in any big way.

I hoped that Sholto's reference book or file or however he'd kept his information was still intact somewhere, and not as I had the horrible suspicion that it would be, burnt to a crisp along with Sholto in the land rover. Even if it had I still held out a bit of hope that somebody as organised as Sholto had been had made a back up copy somewhere. I looked at the uniforms bringing in another five boxes and wondered if I'd still be there at tea time with nothing to show for it.

It was pushing lunch time when Nightingale reappeared and informed us that we needed to head out to Quendale which was about half way between Sholto's house and where he'd burnt to death in his land rover. If it hadn't been for the fact that we were about to accuse Sandy of being... well I wasn't entirely sure what we were going to be accusing him of, I would have welcomed the chance to get away from the endless piles of local interest books. Sandy didn't seem to suspect that Nightingale had an ulterior motive and he looked grateful to leave the scrapbooks containing Sholto's carefully collated newspaper clippings to somebody else.

The weather was reasonable as we drove across country and then took the road towards Quendale. It was pretty impressive scenery down at the southern end of Shetland, all massive cliffs with waves smashing against them and breaking over jagged rocks just off shore. It was just about as remote as anywhere we'd been and I wondered if Nightingale had chosen if for such a reason. No witnesses should something magic related happen or anything else for that matter. If you dropped a body off a cliff here you'd probably never see it again, nobody would. Which was rather worrying now I'd thought it. Not that I wanted to think that Nightingale was planning on getting rid of Sandy, but there was a ruthless practicality about him that he'd probably picked a place like this just in case Sandy surprised us by hurling formae in our direction. So I wasn't surprised when we got to a very empty stretch of road and Nightingale said, "Could you stop here for a moment, please?"

"Of course," Sandy replied. "Are you feeling alright, sir?"

"Yes, thank you," Nightingale said, giving nothing way. He waited for Sandy to pull the car over to the side of the road and park in a gateway. In the field beyond we were watched by five shaggy Shetland ponies. As soon as they decided we weren't bringing them food they ignored us, and I decided that somewhere back down the evolutionary tree they must share an ancestor with Toby.

"Constable Wilson," Nightingale began. "There is something that I need to ask you and I want you to think very carefully about how you answer it."

"Sounds serious," Sandy said. He looked at me. "Do you know what this is about?"

I nodded. I was angry that Sandy had given us a reason to doubt him. Nightingale giving me an approving look for not blurting anything out didn't make me feel any better about it.

"It has come to my attention," Nightingale continued. "That there are a lot of unanswered questions regarding your work. A lot of unverifiable sources and anonymous witnesses."

"What are you accusing me of?" Sandy said, sounding surprised and hurt. "Fabricating evidence to secure a convection? Taking bribes to get people off the hook or frame them? I don't know what it's like in London, but we don't hold with things like that up here."

"If I believed the problem lay in that direction I would be taking my concerns to Inspector Perez," Nightingale said. He fixed Sandy with that piecing grey stare of his. "No, my suspicions about you lay in another direction entirely, one that neither you or I would want to see committed to official records."

"I...I don't know what you mean." Sandy looked away and it was painfully obvious that he did.

I didn't want to start a whole good cop, bad cop routine, but I could see he was scared and I suspected that scaring him even more would be counter productive. So I said, "Look, Sandy. We're willing to listen to what you're going to say. Because even if it sounds crazy there a pretty good chance that we're going to believe you."

Sandy looked at me sitting in the back and then at Nightingale in the front passenger seat next to him. "You don't investigate stolen antiques, do you? You catch people like Trolhoulland."

Nightingale nodded gravely. "That you consider Trolhoulland to be something other than a regular thief and possible murderer is telling. So it would be best for you to tell us exactly what you know about him and this case."

Sandy still looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights and he swallowed nervously before saying, "I don't know why he's doing what he is, and I don't know for certain that I'm right about what he is. There's not been one seen since the fifties."

"What is he?" Nightingale asked more insistently this time.

Sandy looked away before saying quietly, "A Sea Trow."

"Wait a minute, didn't Robbie Leask say something about those?" I said, then just what he'd said came back to me and I almost wished I hadn't remembered. I couldn't back out of saying it now, as Nightingale was watching me as a closely as he was Sandy. "He said you were touched by them. What did he mean? That you've done a deal with them?"

"No. Robbie was just repeating what Mima told him when they were children," Sandy said sounding more tired than anything now. "Mima's family had always had a way with the sea. I don't know if she made it up or if she believed it, but she told him that somewhere back in the family one of our ancestors had been a Sea Trow."

"How many years?" Nightingale asked.

"Centuries, if were true," Sandy said. "Look I still don't know what you're accusing me of or what you think I've done. Because as far as I can tell the problem is that I've not officially recorded that I believe Trolhoulland might not be human. What did you expect me to do? Instantly work out you're part of some hush-hush unit who deal with weird stuff and tell you I thought out chief suspect was something as mythical and the Loch Ness blooming monster."

He had a point. There was also something kind sweet about how even though he was stressed out he didn't swear. Yes, Sandy was definitely the type of person my Mum would refer to a nice boy.

"What I want to know is how you know about things like Trolhoulland in the first place and why you didn't discount it as folk story as most would," Nightingale said.

"I only know what Mima told me and I had no reason to doubt her." Sandy leant back in his seat and close his eyes. "I grew up with the stories, with all of it. I lived as much with Mima as with my Dad after Mum passed. He could hardly take me out on the boat with him."

I would have given him a minute right then as he was starting to sound upset. I mean who wouldn't be? He'd told me about finding her murdered little more than a year ago. Bad enough that she'd been his Gran, but it sounded like she'd been like a Mum to him as well. He must have been devastated.

Nightingale didn't seem to believe in giving people a minute and immediately asked, "And what precisely is 'all of it?' "

"That there's magic in things. In the earth, the sea and sky and that some people know how to use it." Sandy opened his eyes and unfastened his seatbelt. "She told me about the Other People, the ones who've been here as long as the islands, longer maybe. The Trowies, Selkies and Sea Trows. How to find them and talk to them."

"Your Grandmother was a witch?" Nightingale asked and I serious thought for a moment Sandy was going to lose his cool and clock him one.

"Don't talk about her like that, don't you dare," Sandy said, angry for the first time since we'd met him. He opened his door and got out the car slamming it behind him, then went to lean against the low wall over looking the cliffs.

He didn't look happy, but I doubted he was going to run off and leave his car or do anything spectacularly stupid, so I said, "Do you think he's telling the truth?"

"Even if he is it puts us in an awkward position," Nightingale replied. "The rules laid out during the formation of the modern police force are clear; there is to be no unauthorised use of magic to aid investigation or to secure convictions."

That was the first I'd heard of it, but then you could hardly put it in basic coppering 101 could you. What would it say? Keep a full chain of evidence, hitting the suspect even if he hit you first isn't on and by the way don't use Impelo to make your suspect confess. I was feeling bad for Sandy now, he didn't seem to have done anything wrong and now he was scared about what was going to happen to him now that we knew. "That wasn't in any handbook I got issued," I said. "How was he supposed to know?"

There was definitely irritation in Nightingale's voice as he replied, "I should hardly have to tell you that ignorance of the law is not a valid defence."

"So what are we going to do?" I said, not liking where this felt like it was going. "Are we really taking about destroying his career or worse, even if he's done nothing wrong? Well not apart from knowing about magic."

Nightingale looked at Sandy. He was lonely looking figure standing on the cliff top, surrounded by empty sea and sky. Nightingale sighed and turned back to me. "I may not have a choice."

"Of course we have a choice," I said. The conversation felt oddly similar to the one we'd had about Simone and her sisters, well apart from the fact that Simone had been a jazz vampire and Sandy was somebody who'd made the apparently bad choice to believe the stories his Gran told him. "If all he can do is tell that magic is there or that somebody else is using it that's not the same as him doing it himself."

"True, but we need to be careful," Nightingale said and then got out of the car. "I know you thought of him as a friend, but I cannnot allow us to make the same mistake of trusting the wrong person again."

Lesley switching sides hurt, but letting that influence how we were going to deal with Sandy felt terribly wrong, but I had no idea how to get that through to Nightingale, especially as it sounded like he'd got it into his head that he was somehow protecting me by doing it. Miserable about how things were going, I followed him out of the car.

Sandy hurriedly wiped his eyes as we approached. I'd not thought it was possible to feel worse about the whole thing, but knowing that we'd managed to make a grown man cry felt like a new low. I was about to go and ask if he was okay when Nightingale started talking.

"I apologise for calling your late Grandmother a witch. I meant no disrespect, rather that she was a practitioner who had learnt her knowledge of magic outside of a formal setting."

Sandy looked at us like he really didn't want to accept the apology. "So you both went to some kind of police Hogwarts, did you? They have those in London, do they?"

I almost laughed at the face Nightingale made. Almost.

"No. Contrary to the belief of a number of individuals." He looked at me. "Our lives are neither modelled on nor dictated by a series of children books."

"So what made my Gran any different than you then?" Sandy asked, anger still there beneath the surface. "Why do you think you're so much better than her?"

Okay, time to play good cop again then. "All we're saying is that she was trained in a different way, not that any way is better. So could you tell us what sort of things she taught you or showed you?"

He nodded and then sat down on the wall. "Mima said that she'd got out of practice with a lot of what her Mother and Grandmother had shown her. She told me magic had gone to sleep for years, but that in the early Eighties she felt it waking up again and saw the Trowies out in the sheep fields, gathering the snags of wool. It was just a couple of years after that my Mother passed and I was round there most days. That was when I first saw the Trowies, saw how Mima would bring them things and talk to them."

"Did she know why magic had gone or why it came back?" Nightingale asked.

"No and when I asked she told me that was how it was. Or at least that was how she thought it was, like the cycle of seasons, that everything that happened was meant to." Sandy smiled sadly. "I don't know if that was true or not, there was a lot she didn't tell me. The magic of the land as she called was always something that had been of the women, the sea was for the men. She would have taught a daughter or granddaughter if she had either. It should have been for my Father and Grandfather to teach me of the sea. Dad never learnt, he doesn't hold with it even now. I don't think he ever believed in it. And Granddad, well he wasn't really that, but he'd not liked it, thought it was wrong somehow. I know he made Mima unhappy."

It didn't sound anything like the kind of magic Nightingale had been showing me and I wondered if it really was something different, if the people up here, away from Newton and his Latin and Greek, had found a way of making it work for them. "So Mima taught you how to talk to Trowies, did she teach you how to do magic, like making fire or lights or something?"

"Only if you count handing me a box of matches to get her kitchen range lit. I didn't know you could, I've never seen anybody use magic to burn..." He stopped and gave us both a wide-eyed and horrified stare. "Sholto. Was that magic?"

"It was," I said. A shiver ran through me at the thought of how I'd been sucked in by it at the autopsy. "Whole super fiery end with added bonus drowning was pretty horrible."

"Peter?" Nightingale sounded worried, which was never a good sign. "Whatever do you mean? There was a strong vestigia of fire and fear present, one that it was all too easy to be overwhelmed by. What water was present beyond that which the firemen used to extinguish the blaze?"

Talking about it wasn't in my top ten of things I wanted to do, it didn't even make my top thousand, but I could hardly tell Nightingale no. Not when it might tell us more about our potential thieving, murdering Sea Trow. "It was sort of underneath the rest. The fear and fire thing was nasty, so I looked underneath it at the damp bit and it just grabbed me. I thought you knew."

"No, why ever didn't you tell me?" Nightingale said. "If I had known, I would never have left you alone in the corridor."

"DI Perez was with me, I was alright," I said. I think as soon as I was out of the room I realised I would be, but being asked at the time would have been nice. "I figured you were just angry that I'd not listen to you. I thought you knew."

"You may sometimes drive me to distraction, and I am quite aware that you believe some of my methods to be rather more ruthless than you would like, but I am not as callous as you apparently believe me to be," he said, plainly unhappy about the fact I'd not told him. "When have I ever given you a reason to think such a thing?"

Only about a million times since the Skygarden. I knew that was unfair, well I did since he'd admitted that he wasn't dealing with stuff any better than I was. "I don't think I really was thinking at the time," I said going with the easy get out answer. "And afterwards we were so busy I didn't get time."

"I don't have any idea what you are talking about, but whatever is going on is serious, isn't it?" Sandy asked, then frowned. "That sounded awful, Mr Sholto has already lost his life, and it made that sound like it didn't matter. I didn't mean it like that."

"Please don't tell me you knew him," Nightingale said. "You realise you'll be off the case if you do."

"I didn't, but he was still a person who met a terrible end, I shouldn't have made him sound unimportant." Sandy went back to leaning on the wall and looking out at the sea. "I didn't know magic could be used for anything like that. I thought it was something harmless. Mima never told me about anything like this."

We all stood around for a minute or two feeling rather awkward about things. Okay, maybe that was just me. Sandy seemed lost and Nightingale looked like he planning something. So after a few more moments of awkwardness, followed by the realisation that it was actually bloody freezing standing on a cliff top, I said, "I don't suppose we could talk in the car instead?"

Nightingale nodded, and then coughed. His cough had got a lot better, but it hadn't gone yet. I knew it was ridiculous to expect that the antibiotics would get rid of it in three days, but I knew I wouldn't stop worrying about him until it properly stopped. Not that I'd tell him that. We were as bad as each other, I decided for worrying in silence and somehow expecting each other to be mind readers. I doubted either of us would really change, I just hoped we got used to each other enough to know when we were being complete idiots about something and talk before we screwed things up.

"Do you know anything about Sea Trows? or the nature of their abilities?" Nightingale once we were back in Sandy's car.

"Not much, nothing more than what you'd read in any folk stories book you could pick up at the library. They were supposed to me part of the same race as the Trowies once, but they had a falling out over something, stories vary, but mostly it seems to have been because the Sea Trows were more like humans. Some of them took human husbands or wives, but those stories get mixed up with those about Selkies."

"For those not up on their mythical creatures of Shetland," I said, "What are Selkies?"

"They are people with the ability to change into a seal or a seal with the ability to change into a person. It depends on how you look at it. The have a magic seal skin they use to transform and if they stay in either form for more than a year without changing they stay that way," Sandy said. He thought for a moment then added, "I've never seen one. Although unless you see one changing you apparently can't tell, so maybe I have and not knownn it. They don't have any powers other than being able to change, or none that I've heard of."

"So we can rule out Selkies from our list of what Trolhoulland might be?" I said.

"It would appear so," Nightingale said. "Do you know who would know more about Sea Trows? Or anybody who would be willing to talk to us on the subject?"

"I don't know if they'd talk to you or Peter," he said, not sounding entirely sure if what he was about to suggest was a good idea or not. "But they will talk to me, as long as I bring them their gifts."

"Who are they and what form of gift do they require?" Nightingale asked, sounding rather dubious about the whole thing.

"The Trowies. I don't know the ones from South Mainland as well as those on Bressay, but if Trolhoulland is a Sea Trow they will want to help." Sandy clipped his seatbelt back into place. "The gift is meat, bread and milk."

Bread and salt didn't sound to bad. "What kind of meat?" I asked, hoping the reply wouldn't be something along the lines of killing a sheep or something.

"They seem quite partial to corned beef for some reason," Sandy said. "That and Spam. I think it's because it keeps well and they know how get the tin open."

After all the tension I laughed. Apparently it wasn't just supernatural population of London that was moving with the times.

So after a brief stop at a village shop to get a pint of milk, a can of corned beef and a packet of bread rolls, we went looking for Trowies. Trowies or Trows as some people called them were sort of like trolls, Sandy explained as we walked across an empty field, heading for a what looked like a half collapsed wall.

I'd met a troll. Well sort of, it had mostly been Nightingale who'd done the talking to the guy who lived under a bridge and who the rest of the world probably thought was one of London's many rough sleepers. What I couldn't see here was anywhere that a troll could live. Neither could Nightingale, and as Sandy walked on ahead of us, he said quietly, "Stay alert."

When Sandy had got to a couple of metres from the jumble of stones, he turned and looked at us. "Could you wait there please, just until I've spoken to them? They don't get many visitors and I don't want to scare them off."

"Do what you need to do," Nightingale said, as we watched and waited to see what would happen.

I'd sort of expected something magic to happen, to feel that familiar rush as formae is created nearby, only there wasn't. Sandy took the gifts out of their plastic bag and placed them carefully at the bottom of the tumble of stones. Then he picked up a couple of the stones and banged them together three times, and then stepped back. For a couple of minutes nothing happened and I was beginning to think we were wasting our time when a Trowie finally appeared.

It looked like a troll. Not one of the huge moving rock plies of popular fantasy or the kind that lived unnoticed  under bridges in London. No this looked like the little rubber trolls with sticky-up hair that you could get to put on the end of pencils. Only much, much dirtier and wearing what appeared to be a string vest made of scraps of wool and seaweed.

It inspected the gifts, nodded at Sandy and then gave a shrill whistle. Three more Trowies quickly appeared and collected the gifts, disappearing with them as fast as they'd came. Once they'd gone Sandy crouched down and spoke to the remaining Trowie. I couldn't tell what he was saying, but he pointed back to us a couple of times, so I guessed he was trying to explain why we were there and tto get it to speak to us.

Then Sandy stood back up and the Trowie promptly dived back into the rocks and was gone. We'd trie. I supposed that had to count for something, I thought as he walked back over to us.

"We're in luck," Sandy said as he reached us. "They've got a member of the Southern Council visiting them, and she's willing to hear what we've got to say. Larn, who was on watch today, was a bit vague about why Hjalda is here, but I think they might be looking into the Sea Trow angle themselves."

Somehow I doubted that was good thing. Knowing our luck of late we'd probably stumbled into inter-troll gang warfare. There wasn't much point speculating about it without any facts to back it, so we waited by the heap of stones and I tried to work out where they were getting in and out of it. I thought I'd got it figured out when another Trowie, smaller than the last, with matted grey hair hanging down to its knees and leaning on a knobby walking stick appeared from a point I'd just discounted.

She stared up at Sandy with large yellowish-green eyes that would have looked at home on a jungle cat, and then said something in what sounded like a comedy sketch show's made up version Swedish with a bit of something that might have been Welsh thrown in for good measure. Sandy listened intently, then crouched down again, before replying.

I had no idea what he was saying. I could catch a word or two here and there, like Trolhoulland and Sholto, but that was it. The impatient expression on Nighitngale's face left me in little doubt he hadn't got a clue what was being said either.

  
Hjalda listened to Sandy with a ferocious scowl on her face, so either what he was saying was pissing her off or maybe she thought he was mangling her language. When he stopped Hjalda launched into what I suspected was the foulest swearwords known to Trowkind, if Sandy's embarrassed expression was anything to go by. She rounded it off by giving him a jab in the leg with her walking stick and then stomping over to us.

There had been plenty of things that I'd not expected to happen in Shetland, and watching Nightingale have a staring contest with the world tiniest, dirtiest troll was definitely up there with the weirdest. I couldn't tell who looked away first, as it seemed to be a mutual thing, an acknowledgement that taking anything further than staring would probably end badly for anybody in the immediate vicinity.

Hjalda spoke to Sandy again, who after a moment translated for us. "She's not happy that I've brought outsiders into this. Especially not ones with magic like yours. But she understands that because Trolhoulland has killed a human that it can no longer be thought of as a problem only of the Trowingas. The Trow nation."

"Could you ask her if she knows where he is or what he is planning to do with the stones?" Nightingale asked.

We waited again, and then Sandy gave us what I suspected was PG rated version of what Hjalda had said. "She doesn't know where he is. When he uses magic on lands belonging to the Trowies they can tell, but when he isn't they don't know where he is.  
And if she knew what he was planning to do with the stones she would um... put them where the sun doesn't shine, so to speak."

"Does she know what the stones were used for?" I asked. If we had an idea what they did then maybe we could work out what he was going to do from the stuff in Sholto's house.

Another minute or two passed before we got our translation. "They are for storing magic, but the people who used them are long gone. She said they were made by the children of the tower builders and she'd never seen them used, but they were connected to power over the land."

"What kind of power?" Nightingale asked sharply. "Are they dangerous?"

Hjalda seemed to get what he was asking and waved her stick at Nightingale, before snapping something back at him. She didn't wait for Sandy to translate before turning and walking off back toward the pile of stones.

"Everything is dangerous in the hands of fools," Sandy translated, as he watched her go. "I don't think Hjalda liked having to admit she didn't know what was going on any more than we do."

"So that's it? We're not going to get any more help from them than that?" I asked. I'd not expected them to be able to hand Trolholland over to us, but giving us something more than vague answers that actually answered nothing at all would have been nice.

"Perhaps. Or she might call a meeting of the council and they might decided to help us," Sandy said, pulling up the hood on his coat as the rain started to fall again. "Either way there's no point standing around here. Do we actually need to go to Quendale or was that a trick to get me out of the station?"

"A necessary lie given the circumstances we find ourselves in," Nightingale said as we walked back to the car. "Hjalda spoke of being able to tell if Trolholland used magic on their land. Are you able to do the same?"

"Sorry, it's only if the person is nearby, preferably where I can see them," Sandy said, glancing round to Trowies lived. "I really can't do magic in that way, and I don't think talking to Trowies count. It's just a language like any other. I'm rather a disappointment I imagine."

"Quite the opposite," Nightingale replied. "Had you been using unsanctioned magic I would have had no choice but to stop you."

Sandy stopped and stared at him. "How?"

There was a tight-lipped smiled on Nightingale face before he answered. "I think you have your suspicions. I suggest that we leave it at that."

I wanted it left at that too, because I had my suspicions as well and I didn't want to find out anything about Nightingale that I couldn't end up justifying to myself. Which was a lie, because I would end up justifying it, and that scared the crap out of me if I was honest. Sandy had other ideas, and said, "So how do you get to be a police sanctioned magician?"

Nightingale folded his arms. "You don't."

"By that you mean me? Because you're training Peter, aren't you?"

"I am," Nightingale conceded. "That is also the reason why I can't consider training anybody else. To take more than one apprentice is unwise. The risks are too great for all concerned."

And wasn't that the truth, I thought bitterly. He could have said no to training Lesley, but I'd put him in a position where he'd felt he had no choice. Letting her experiment on her own at home would have been too risky both for her and for her family and I knew her too well to know that she wouldn't have stopped even if we'd told her to. It wasn't any comfort to know that I wouldn't have listened either had our situations been reversed.

"And when you've finished training him?" Sandy asked, trying not to sound too hopeful and failing. "What then?"

There was a look of something that might have been fear crossed Nightingale's face, but it was gone before I had a chance to consider why. "That is years away, anything could happen in that time."

"There's more to this magic stuff than Trolhoulland and what's going on here, isn't there? And I'm not going to get an answer, am I?" Sandy asked, sounding resigned to the fact.

"It's probably best that you don't," I said. All the things that had happened in London as weird, wonderful and downright awful as they were seemed a million miles away, and I didn't want Sandy to be pulled into it. I'd got Lesley involved in it and that had been a disaster all round. No, I decided, I was going to keep quiet about it unless I had no choice.

"Is what you do really so different to what we do here?" Sandy said as we reached the car. "Is it as dangerous as what Trolhoulland can do?"

"Nothing that I can show you here. Unless you wish your phone and car stereo to stop working," Nightingale said. "Magic in any form other that securely stored has the rather unfortunate side effect of damaging electrical items."

"Knowing that might have been helpful," Sandy said, frowning. "There were some weird power cuts back at the end of last year in the area around Virkie. People thought it might have been kids on the school holidays playing with the cables or something, but we never found anything. Then early in January it stopped."

About the time Trolhoulland had left for London then. Now this sounded like the kind of lead we could do with. "Were the power cuts focused in a particular part of Virkie?" I asked.

"Mainly in the south of the village," he replied. "People were worried because the airport is only about half a mile down the road. If the lights or power went out there it could have been a serious problem."

"Quite," Nightingale said and got into the car.

I could tell he was as puzzled about what Trolhoulland's plan was. Because he must have a plan, nobody went to the trouble of doing what Trolhoulland had, the library research, the trip to the other end of the country, the theft and then the murder, unless they were going to get something out of it. The question was what was it and whether he'd managed to get it already.

 

TBC

 

A/N

Yes, I know I said it wouldn't go up to more than 7 parts, but I've had to split part 6 into two sections as it as both too long and would end up meaning a long gap between postings.


	7. Chapter 7

Virkie was like a lot of other villages that we had driven through in our time in Shetland. There was a few dozen single story houses, a community centre-pub-sports club combo building and the ubiquitous village shop. There was also apparent a primary school and a chapel if the road signs were to be believed. I suspected that Virkie was thought of a quite a big place by local standards. There weren't that many people out and about, and with the weather getting progressively worse I didn't blame them. 

We drove down to where the power cuts had been, but unsurprisingly a month after the fact there wasn't anything there to say what had happened. The two people who who'd braved the weather to walk their dogs in formed us they'd been in the north of the island over Christmas and the New Year at their daughter's house. So after a bit of discussion we decided to have a look further south incase it had been the airport that Trolhoulland had been targeting. The road down to the airport, like most in Shetland as far as I could tell, followed the coastline meaning it took ages to get anywhere, but at least you had a nice view while you were getting nowhere fast. 

It was Nightingale who saw the plane first, and while he didn't say anything I could see the unspoken 'oh crap' in his eyes. I was pretty sure mine were the same. The plane, a tiny thing not much more than a ten seater or so was coming in incredibly low over the sea to our right. Barely ten metres above the choppy waves its path would take it directly across the road in front of us. That was assuming it didn't drop further and plough into the road and us.

Sandy must have seen it too as he slowed the car down and then stopped at what appeared to be a set of railway level crossing lights at the side of the road. The plane when it finally passed in front of us was only above six metres of the ground and the landing wheels were down, it cleared the airport fence by a couple of metres and landed on the narrow and frighteningly short runway on the other side. 

The weather had made the ferry trip out to Shetland something that I never wanted to repeat, but seeing the tiny plane lurching in the wind I didn't think I wanted to try flying out either. Leaving wasn't something that I'd thought too closely on, but I knew that sooner rather than later we would have to regardless of whether we'd closed the case or not. We'd already had five days here, which for an investigation was nothing as investigations often dragged on for months, but I doubted we'd be able to swing our stay here for more than a few more days. 

Any half formed idea that Trolhoulland might have been trying to disrupt something with the airport or a plane didn't seem all that likely any more, not now we'd seen the place. It wasn't like the City of London airport or even Aberdeen where there were houses directly in the flight path, the route here was entirely over the sea until it got to within a few metres of the runway. Even including the tide being out giving you a wider beach, plus the road and grass verge there wasn't more than a hundred metres between the sea and the start of the tarmac. No wonder they didn't land anything here if the weather was bad, it looked like it would be pretty terrifying even on a good day. 

"They put the in lights in quite a few years ago," Sandy said, sounding unconcerned as he got the car moving again. "There were a couple of incidents where the wheels clipped the top of a tractor or van. There's never been an accident from it, but I think people were worried, so we got the crossing lights." 

"Is there anything further down the coast from here?" Nightingale asked, eyes still on the airport. "Anything that someone may want to target for any reason?" 

Sandy shook his head. "There's only another mile or so and then you reach Sumburgh Head, there's nothing after that until you reach Fair Isle about twenty-five miles across the North Sea if you go south, if you go east there's Norway or west to Iceland." 

"Is there anything at Sumburgh?" I asked. I knew we'd passed it on the St Clair as we'd slowly made our way to Lerwick, but between the weather and how awful we'd felt, I was surprised I even remember the announcement. 

"There's a few houses, a hotel and the lighthouse." He thought for a moment before adding, "There's a couple of archaeological sites. I suppose he might try stealing something from them." 

Trolhoulland had managed to nick the rocks from the museum in Greenwich without resorting to magic and that had to have been harder than getting them out of the ground where there was nobody around to see you, so I didn't get why he would have turned to it here. Apart from that just looking for something shouldn't end up giving off the kind of magic that knocked out the power for a load of houses. No, there had to be something else that he'd been up to. 

"I don't suppose there are any more Trowies around here who might be able to tell us what he was up to?" I said. 

Sandy looked thoughtful for a moment and then said, "I don't know. This part of Shetland wasn't really my patch, not until a few months ago and I've not worked a case down here before. I only knew about the Trowies near Quendale because I'd been told about them." 

"By whom?" Nightingale asked. 

"Mima. Her Gran had lived down this end of the island, back in the Thirties and she'd stayed with her sometimes." Sandy looked out at the steadily increasing downpour. With a sigh and resigned look, he said, "I can go out and have a look for them if you really want me to." 

The downside to Sandy going to look meant we'd end up in the wet and cold looking as well as Nightingale wouldn't be hands off for this, as I don't think he'd started trusting Sandy yet, so letting him go off alone to do anything connected with the case was a non-starter. I was about to suggest that maybe we should go back to Sholto's house and see if we could find anything that linked him to Sea Trows or Trowies, when Sandy's phone rang. 

It was Tosh. She'd found Sholto's notebook and it was bloody weird. Her words not mine. Weird was good, well hopefully, and we turned car round and headed back into Lerwick. It turned out Sholto had kept it shoved under the mattress. It didn't look like it had been a last minute attempted to hide it, given how creased it was it was more likely it was just where he kept it normally. 

Although it was hand written it was easy to read, although to the casual reader, with all its mentions of trolls and sea people, it looked like a man's descent into madness. He'd been an old guy and he'd lost his wife in the last couple of years, he'd no close family and since Maura, as the late Mrs Sholto had been called, had died he'd lost contact with most of his old friends. People would rationalise it, shake their heads and say dementia was a terrible thing and wasn't it a shame he'd not got any family to look after him. 

To those of us who knew that Trows and magic were real it made us ask different questions, like what had Trolhoulland promised him in exchange for his research? Sholto didn't seem irrational enough to believe something like he'd get his wife back using magic and there was nothing to suggest that he had any sort of faith an afterlife of any kind, so it probably wasn't that. He didn't seem to have any money problems. He'd owned his house, saved carefully according bank records and had got a couple of job related pensions that had made for a comfortable old age, so it didn't seem like it was that either. 

The answer or at least something like it soon became clear in how he talked about Trolhoulland and the magic he'd shown him. The discovery of a lifetime. His place in history. He would be the man who helped to unite the natural and supernatural worlds. And that was it, Sholto must have looked at his life and thought who would remember him when he was gone. Trolhoulland had played off that and made him feel like he was getting his place in the history books. As a retired history teacher that must have felt pretty special. And what had he received in return? Being burnt alive. 

"Poor old guy," Tosh said shaking her head and then pushing her hair back out of her eyes. "Winding him up like that and then killing him. There are some sick people in the world." 

"Trolhoulland may believe what he said was true," Sandy said, eyes still on the book. "It's still horrible, but it's not the same as him tricking him on purpose." 

"So you think we've got a nutter out there who really believes he's the long lost king of the fish-people?" Tosh said, sounding less than reassured. "Don't you think that's worse? Having a complete nutcase on the loose."

Sandy glanced towards me, looking worried that if he said anymore he'd have Nightingale on his case, before answering, "I didn't mean it was better. But I'd rather think a person had mental issue rather than them being evil." 

"I suppose," Tosh said sounding unconvinced. "Doesn't help us find him though, does it? Maybe we could try calling round a few GPs surgeries and ask whether they've had a patient who was delusional and who's stopped taking their medication or missed their appointments. They might not know him as Trolhoulland, I mean what sort of name is Gavra anyway?" 

It was a good theory and if it wasn't for the fact that I knew he really was a sea trow I'd have been asking to help out with the calls.   
Tosh wrote it up on the whiteboard as a possibly avenue of investigation and then we got back to reading the rest of it.

Sholto's notebook, which was more of a diary in places meant we got a handle on how he and Trolhoulland had met. Which had been on a beach near Sholto's house about six months ago, after which they'd gone to the pub a few times, before Trolhoulland had started to get him to look into where the stones were. The last entry was two days before Sholto had been murdered, and it simply said 'Meeting Gavra for lunch. Twelve at the Noost. Bring books.' None of the other entries really gave that much away about Trolhoulland, well not apart from the fact that Trolhoulland could breathe underwater had given Sholto a demonstration of it in the wonderfully name Pool of Virkie. 

The Noost was a cafe-bar in Lerwick, so we made plans to go round ask whether anybody had seen two old guys having lunch and whether it looked like they'd fallen out by the end of it. Most of the other places that they seem to have arranged to meet were pubs or cafes, interestingly they never seemed to have gone to the same place twice, which was quite a feat in Shetland. Maybe they just liked variety or maybe Trolhoulland didn't want to be recognised as a regular anywhere. 

We took turns reading sections of it and made a list of people he mentioned, although none of them seem to have any real significance to them. They generally considered of things like 'Call Jonnie Ross about coal delivery' or 'Dentist appointment. Wednesday 1pm with Mrs Carroll.' Handy for working out a timeline of where'd been, but no use at all in finding out where Trolhoulland was hanging out when he wasn't indulging a bit of breaking and entering or murder. 

We kept at it until just before six, when Perez called us and what appeared to most of the uniforms as well into the main office. Briefing time. It didn't matter which nick you were in or who the DI was you could always tell when it was going to be one of those briefings where by the end of it you felt like you'd spent the last few days doing sod all despite working all day and half the night too. 

"Most of you know there is a major investigation going on in connection with the murder of Andrew Sholto and that our suspect, Gavra Trolhoulland has so far avoided arrest." He waited a moment for that to sink in and then continued. "To that end I've spent most of the afternoon talking to the Procurator Fiscal and then the head of the Lerwick Times, and we've come to an agreement. An appeal for information about Trolhoulland will run in tomorrow's edition of the paper. Not all the facts will be released. We've decided to keep the fact that Sholto's death was murder out for now. I've given Tosh has got a draft copy of what is being sent out so you'll know if your caller knows more than they should about his death." 

Nightingale looked less than happy at this development and I can't say as I was delighted either. Having a tonne of armchair detectives who's only experience of solving crime was watching Columbo a couple of times was never ideal. There were only really two reasons for giving the press access to the case. One was that the case was so high profile that if you didn't given them something they'd make up a load of stuff that would make your job ten times harder and spawn stack of conspiracy theories about police cover ups, corruption or both. The other reason was when the prospect of having hundreds of mostly junk calls from the well meaning but ultimately clueless public was actually your best chance at catching whoever had done it. I knew what category our case was being put in. 

We worked for a bit longer, but with the notebook being our only useful piece of new evidence that gave us the sort of solid connection between Sholto and Trolhoulland that judges liked, there was a limit to how much we could achieve. That was doubly true for us covering the magic angle as we couldn't talk about it in the increasingly busy incident room. 

By eight we'd been told to go home and with yet another takeaway eaten, we decamped back to my room at Sea View to try and work out all the stuff we couldn't talk about at the station. The we in question was Nightingale, Sandy and me. I was fairly sure that neither of them was all that keen on the other one being there, but knew that if we were to get anywhere with the case it was necessary. Nightingale had the magic knowhow and more experience of more weird cases than anybody else and Sandy had the local knowledge that we needed. As for me I was seemed to have got the role of mediator and provider of increasingly unlikely ideas.

The mediator part was irritating, but seemingly unavoidable as I was fairly sure that Nightingale still didn't particularly trust Sandy, and Sandy for his part didn't trust Nightingale wasn't doing to royally screw him over once the case was done. You could probably have frozen stuff in the atmosphere between them or at the very least chilled some beer in it by the time we'd been there an hour. I'd hoped that after finding out that Sandy couldn't do magic as we recognised it that the tension would have gone, but the whole time we'd been at the station they'd barely said a word to each other. It didn't help it felt like we were going round in circles. Everything came back to Trolhoulland, but we still had no idea where he was or what he wanted. 

"What I don't understand is why he killed Sholto?" Sandy said, leaning back and closed his eyes. "Sholto had been the one who'd provided him with information, which he'd presumably needed and couldn't get himself. So why do it?"

"Sholto had outlived his usefulness," Nightingale suggested. "He would also have been one of the few people who could identify him and reveal what he'd done. He was tying up loose ends." 

It sounded all too plausible and if that were the case we'd probably lost our chance at catching him. Yet if that were true why make such a big statement out of Sholto's death? Why not just dispose of him quietly? Trolhoulland was a magical sea creature, why not drown him and dump his body in the sea? Even a house fire would have drawn less suspicion. What he'd done was the opposite of hiding it, it was shouting about it from the roof tops. 

It all came back to what I'd been taught at Hendon and what I'd thought on that cold damp morning out at Bigton. Sholto's death was meant to get attention. Burning somebody alive was statement, a huge fuck off shouty statement that said 'Look at me, look at my devotion to my cause' or 'Fear me, I'll do this to you if you cross me.' 

The cause, whatever it was, had never really been Sholto's his diary made that clear, he was along for the ride out of a combination of loneliness and a wish to be remembered. Trolhoulland hadn't exactly been forthcoming with the information he'd shared with him if the notebook was anything to go by. No, this was all Trolhoulland. His cause. His demonstration of his power. You didn't do show off like that unless you meant business and you certainly didn't do it if you were trying to disappear quietly and without trace. 

Although I'd never wanted to get stuck one of the units who dealt with gangs and drugs you didn't grow up in inner city South London and certainly not as a kid with a drug dependent dad on a housing estate without being aware of both things. I'd stayed well clear, personal experience of what it could do and all that, but there had been kids at school who'd gone down that route. Trolhoulland massive overkill of Sholto with magic on Trowie turf had the feel of one gang showing they were going to take the other's manor and there was nothing they could do about it. Inter species troll warfare, that was a new one.

"You have something to share with us?"

I looked up to see Nightingale standing next to me. He must have come over while I'd been lost in thought. He was near as bad at sneaking up on me as Molly. "Yes, I think so," I said. "I've been thinking about how Trolhoulland killed Sholto and where."

"You believe the location is significant?" he asked. "You were at the scene, is there something that you failed to mention before?"

"No." We were all tired but there was no need, I thought, for him to all but accuse me of not doing my job properly. "It's on Trowie land, isn't it?" I looked at Sandy who nodded his agreement. "And it was visible from the sea, probably for quite a few miles up and down the coast as well."

I paused for a moment as I'd learn that it was generally a good idea to let some of my idea sink in before ploughing on with the rest of it. "So it was where both Trowies and Sea Trows would see it, although not a great spot for us humans to get a good look. It wasn't just about killing Sholto, he could have done that a dozen different ways where he'd never have been suspected. This was a warning not to cross him." I was on a roll now so I kept going. "But I think it might be more than that. I think it was a challenge to the Trowies, a declaration of war." I stopped the reason for the theft of the stones hitting me upside the head. "He wants the power in the stones to make sure he wins."

"A magical war?" Sandy said surprised. "Surely nobody would be that crazy, he can't think nobody would notice something like that."

I swore I saw a shiver run through Nightingale, and he said, "There has been, most were unaware of due scale of the rest of the war. So I hope you both realise the severity of the situation is this is true."

Not fully, but I knew enough that if it had Nightingale spooked then it was a very, very bad thing indeed. "We need to warn the Trowies incase he tries something," I said. How did the world's tiniest, dirtiest trolls defend themselves? They had a good line swearing, but that kind of thing was going to be pretty useless against the sort of magic Trolhoulland had used on Sholto.

"I believe they are already quite aware of the situation," Nightingale said sourly. "The council meeting, that had been called in hast, Hjalda charming demeanour. She knew what was happening and she was worried, worried enough that she was reluctantly agreeing to ally with us. I very much doubt that any of them would have spoken to us if they'd not grasped the potential for disaster."

"Do Trowies have magic?" I asked, knowing that it would be a very short and one sided war if they didn't. 

"I think so," Sandy said, not sounding sure at all. "People would bring them the gifts in exchange for favours, like finding someone or something that was lost or helping a crop to grow." 

"So things that could quite easily be done without magic," Nightingale said. "Do you actually have anything useful to add?"

It was far harsher than it needed to be and Sandy looked away, before shaking his head. I knew Nightingale was stressing out about stuff, but sometimes he could be too hard on people. 

"In light of this development we need to talk to Hjalda again, tomorrow morning if possible. I will clear things with Perez for us to be out of the..." Nightingale stopped and then said, "Are we boring you Constable Wilson?"

"No. Sorry, sir," Sandy said trying and failing not to yawn again. "I was duty on until two with Up Helly Aa and back in at eight, I think it's starting to catch up with me." He looked over at the clock. "Is that the time? I really should go home. Perez will want everybody in by eight, because of the newspaper. Is that alright with you, sir?"

Nightingale frowned. He plainly didn't want Sandy there, but he obviously didn't want Sandy to think that he was okay with him going home while there was work to be done. 

"I think we all might be better off for some sleep, sir," I said, when no decision had been made. It was already pushing midnight. He was right, none of us would be any use in the morning if we didn't attempt to get at least a few hours rest. "Who knows how long we'll be working tomorrow." 

I thought he was going to tell me that it wasn't my decision to make, but he spent a good half minute looking annoyed before replying, "You may be right. Looking at this with fresh eyes in the morning might get better results."

I took that as a yes and walked Sandy back down to the door, partly because I wanted to make sure he didn't trip head first down them as he looked asleep on his feet but also because I wanted a moment alone with him to make sure he was okay. He'd not been himself today, and while I wanted to put it all down to the fact he was tired, having us question him about magic and all the memories of his Gran that must have dragged up couldn't have been easy for him. I didn't get a chance to ask thought as Sandy spoke first. 

"Your DCI doesn't like me much, does he?" Sandy said, glancing back at the stairs, like he was scared we were being watched. Satisfied Nightingale wasn't listening to us he added, "I've tried to be nice to him, but he acts like I'm someone he wants to arrest. What will he do once this is over? I mean, I know you'll go back to London. But, me and my job here, what will he do?" 

He looked worried and absolutely knackered, and I felt so sorry for him, especially as I didn't have anything reassuring to say. So I told him the truth. "I don't know. I don't think you've done anything wrong, but it's not up to me." 

Sandy nodded. "This job is all I have. No, that's awful thing to say, I've still got my Dad, but I..." He took a shaky breath. "Sorry. I'm too tired for this, I'm going to end up saying something we'll all regret if I stay. I'll see you in the morning." 

"I'll try to convince him," I said, before he hurried out. I hoped that I could, not only for Sandy's sake but for mine and Nightingale's. Things had been tough between us lately and we'd only just started to straighten things out, falling out over his handling of Sandy could open up that rift between us again. 

 

 

A/N   
When I worked in Shetland it was right next to the airport and the planes coming in low over the road and the level crossing lights really are there. Even had to wait a few times at them to get into work. 

Nearly at then end now, just one more part to go, I'm aiming for the weekend as its nearly time for NaNoWriMo and I need to get this finished before I can sit down and write my own urban fantasy (although no Shetland, London or trolls there. Just werewolves, psychics and West Yorkshire.)


	8. Chapter 8

By the time I got back to my room Nightingale had returned to his. I wasn't sure whether it was avoid what he thought I was going to say or if he was as tired as the rest of us and just wanted to sleep. I thought about going to find out which it was or it was something else, but found wasn't in any mood to argue about Sandy if that was the way the conversation ended up going, so I went to bed with the hope of getting a good few hours in before it was time to get up again.

It wasn't to be as about half past four in the morning my mobile rang. It is a well known fact that people never phone in the early hours of the morning with good news, so I was half asleep and expecting the worst when I managed to get enough coordination to find my mobile and answer the call. "Peter Gr...Sandy, slow down. What is it?"

"It's the Trowies, they came to my house. Trolhoulland is on the Ness of Burgi, doing something, I'm not sure what as they all keep talking at once, but it's something with magic, more than they've seen in a long time."

What did I say, 4am phone calls are never good news. Ever. "Okay," I said switching on the bedside light. "Where are you?" I was hoping the answer was still at home, rather than on my way to deal with it by myself in a well meaning, but likely to get myself incinerated kind of way.

"I'm outside." There was a high pitched chatter of the by now familiar fake-Swedish alike. "I've got Trowies in my car and they are in a hurry to get there. So if you could get down here before they try driving it themselves it would be much appreciated." 

"Okay, give me five minutes," I said as I tried to hold the mobile between my shoulder and by ear while attempting to get dressed. "Actually, you'd better make that ten," I added as I knew it would take Nightingale a little longer to get his suit on that it would pulling on jeans and jumper. 

Two minutes later and mostly dressed I hurried out of my room and knocked on his door. When I didn't get an answer I tried the handle and found he'd left it unlocked. Now there probably is proper form of etiquette for waking a sleeping wizard who's got the power to explode tanks, but I didn't know what it was so I went with, "Sir, you need to get up."

He murmured something indistinct and rolled over. He had to be worn out, we'd spent most of a very long day on our feet and I doubted he was complete well yet, regardless of how much he told me not to fuss. But I knew we couldn't take on Trolhoulland alone, not if the vestigia that had been left on Sholto was anything to go by. "Sir?" I put a hand on his shoulder. "It's time to go."

"David, stay," Nightingale said still asleep. He reached out and took hold of my hand. "Please." 

Okay now this was seriously awkward. "It's me, Peter," I said, not sure if I should try to move my hand away or not.

Nightingale eyes snapped open and he stared at me with what could only be called confusion. It morphed to disappointment and he pulled his hand away like he'd accidentally grabbed something hot. "Peter?" He said looking around. "Why are you in my room?"

"Trolhoulland has started whatever it is he's up to," I said, moving away from his bed, so he had room to get out without standing on my feet. "Sandy is outside with a car full of Trowies. He's ready to go." 

"Do we have any information about where Trolhoulland is or whether he had any accomplices?" Nightingale said, motioning for me to turn around while he got dressed. 

I did and told him that Trolhoulland was at somewhere called the Ness of Burgi, which was probably a place and that the Trowies knew a lot of magic was being flung about. It didn't take him long to get dressed, and I was kind of jealous that he could go from fast asleep to looking wide awake and smartly dressed in about five minutes flat. Especially as I suspected that I looked I'd just been dragged out of bed. 

"Who's David?" I asked as we hurried down the stairs. 

"David who? I've worked with a number of Davids over the years," Nightingale replied, nearly missing his step on the stairs. "Why are you asking?"

Definitely rattled and totally aware of who I was asking about. It didn't feel good having figured it out, so I said, "It was just something you said, it probably isn't important." 

"Then why ask?" He reached the front door and opened it. "Come along, unless you have any more unimportant questions that you feel you need to ask me?" 

"No, sir." And that was that. I knew when I wasn't going to get any answer. I had my suspicions about who it was, and David Mellenby seemed like the most obvious choice. He'd been friends with him, maybe more than that for all I knew, and he'd lost him during the war. All the talk of a magical war had probably brought back a stack of bad memories. No wonder he didn't want to talk about it. 

Sandy's car was parked on the other side of the road and as we went over to it I could see the Trowies hopping about in back seat. There were about a dozen of them and I wondered what the occupancy limit should be for them. One per seat belt? or given their size should they be in a rear facing child seat? Which would limit it two of them in the back. I wasn't going to be the one to suggest it, and I suspected that the Trowies were old enough to be classed as adults and didn't come under the child seat law anyway.

Sandy looked relieved as we got in, while the Trowies got even more animated and were nearly bouncing off the walls. Nightingale claimed the Trowie free front passenger seat, so I ended up in the back with all of them.

"Have you called for back up yet?" Nightingale asked before Sandy had a chance to say anything.

"No, I wasn't sure if I should with it being magic," Sandy said, sounding uncertain that he'd done the right thing. "I can call it in now if you want."

"Don't, we need to have the situation under control first. Then I will make the call," he said. 

I wasn't going to argue the point even though it wasn't the approach that we usually took in London. Back there we had people who knew what we did, both in the police and in whatever it was that Frank Caffrey and his men officially were, here we had Sandy and that was it. It was going to be hard enough filling out the paperwork without mentioning trolls and magic as it was, without having a load of other officers there as witnesses to it. 

The roads were completely deserted at this time of the morning and while Sandy wasn't breaking the speed limit to get us there he was taking the narrow, winding and unlit roads as fast as he safely could. Taking a drive with a car full of tiny, argumentative trolls with no concept of personal space or apparently soap and water was an interesting experience. It was also one, I decided as one of the Trowies climbed over me to reach another that was playing with the car window, that should definitely remain a once in a lifetime thing.

The Ness of Burgi was at the southern most end of Shetland, just down the coast from where we'd been the previous morning at the airport. Unlike the airport it was only accessible on foot so Sandy parked his car at the side of the road and then, with the Trowies leading the way, we headed out across the cliff tops.

It was dark, far darker than I was used to nighttime being. Most people would probably say it was crazy to miss London's orange haze of light pollution, but it would have been handy right now. The thick clouds meant that no moon or stars were visible, so we were reliant on the small torch that Sandy had had in his car. 

The Trowies hurried on ahead and I wondered if their cat-like eyes meant they could see well in the dark. It was just as well somebody knew where we were going as there didn't seem to much in the way of a path and I doubted we'd have found our way without them. The ground got rockier the further we went and the sound of the sea louder and ass we rounded the headland a beam of light from the Sumburgh Head lighthouse lit up the cliffs in front of us.

The path narrowed even more dramatically just a few metres ahead of us until it was just a thin strip of land barely three metres wide with a near vertical seventy-five metre drop on either side down onto jagged rocks that were being battered by the seemingly perpetually rough North Sea. I could feel the magic more strongly ahead of us now. The Trowies hadn't been joking when they'd told Sandy it was powerful, and for a second I could imagine that I was back on top of the Skygarden. Which was definitely not the sort of thing that I wanted to be remembering now or any when else for that matter. 

"Steady," Sandy said grabbing hold of my shoulder as I nearly missed my step. "You don't want to slip out here. I don't think you'd stand much of a chance if you went in the sea." 

The Trowies seemed to be rather more cautious the closer we got and before long it was Sandy leading the way with the tiny trolls bringing up the rear. I could just about see them even without a torch now as the sky wasn't as dark as it had been, an eerie greenish glow lighting up the sky above the Ness of Burgi. 

"Is he doing that?" Sandy asked, looking up.

"Only indirectly," Nightingale said, taking a firmer grip on his staff. "The magic is interfering with the electro-magnetic field in the atmosphere above us. That." He gestured upwards. "Is the Aurora Borealis." 

"The Northern Lights are made by magic?" Sandy asked looking amazed, as flickers of yellow and pink cross the green. "It's incredible." 

"Not usually," Nightingale replied, and I could hear the tension in his voice. "It has been a very long time since I saw such power." 

It was pretty obvious he didn't mean the Skygarden and I didn't ask him where. I had my suspicions and I doubted that he wanted Sandy knowing finding out that he'd seen active service in the Second World War. That kind of thing led to difficult questions. The whole Northern Lights thing was pretty cool, but honestly I would have enjoyed it a whole lot more if I hadn't been worrying about just how much magic was being tossed about to effect things that far up in the atmosphere. 

In the faint green light we could see that there were ruins ahead of us. A low stone building, the tops of the walls half grown over with grass, blocked the path. At its centre was an archway. Little more than a metre high, I suspected that much of it was buried beneath the ground, rather than it having been built for something the size of Hobbits.

"That's the block house," Sandy said, pointing at it. "An Iron Age fort, there are dozens of them along the coast. There always seems to be some university or another up here digging around them."

Which begged the question why was this one so special? Was it its history? Had Burgi been a powerful Shetlander or should that be Shetlandic wizard? Or was it that its location at the southern most point of the island was somehow significant? Or was it just that the place was such a pain in the arse to get to that he thought he'd avoid any unwanted company by doing whatever he was doing out here? 

Through the archway we could see a single figure, light flickering around him. Trolhoulland. Knowing that he was a sea trow and suspecting that this was some kind of claim on territory I'd expected that there would have been a few more of them. There wasn't. Trolhoulland, still wearing the old tweed jacket with leather elbow patches that made him look like a geography teacher, was completely alone inside a circle of cheap tea light candles. 

"So what's the plan?" I said hoping that now we were here we'd got one that was bit better than charge at him and hope for the best. 

"I think that rather depends on what our small allies are intending to do," Nightingale said as he watched Trolhoulland, presumable trying to gauge just what the hell he was doing. "Have they informed you of anything?" he asked Sandy. 

Sandy shook his head and then crouched down to speak to the nearest of the Trowies. "Apparently part of the ancient settlement between the Trowies and the Sea Trows was that they would never again raise arms against each other," Sandy said after a moment. The Trowie said something else and then gave what looked like a shrug. Sandy stood up. "Opinion is divided about what raising arms actually is, but they are pretty sure that there is nothing in the agreement stopping them getting people to fight for them. Which is why they came to me." 

"So why exactly are they here?" Nightingale said, sounding like he was about to lose his temper, as one of the darted round his legs, nearly tripping him up.

"They say they won't fight him directly," Sandy translated again, as the Trowie said something and looked rather annoyed about having to repeat itself. "But they will try to stop the magic he is using, as it isn't his to control."

"How do they intend to do that?" Nightingale asked, but our little troll friend had decided that it had had enough to answering questions and had slipped away into the flickering shadows at the edges of the blockhouse. 

The Trowie however had decided that it had answered more than enough questions and had legged it back to stand with the rest, looking warily at both us and Trolhoulland. Leaving the Trowies out of the planning actually made things simpler in one way, as in the end it came down to the fact that we were police rather than some secret ops or soldiers, so we ended up walking over to him and announcing our presence rather than shooting first and working out what he'd been doing later. 

Some people might have argued that that wasn't a plan at all, but Nightingale had pointed out that shooting a fireball at somebody who was in the middle of constructing a formae as powerful as the one Trolhoulland was doing might result in Shetland losing the last half mile of coastline. So Nightingale went first as neither of us could fault his argument. I could feel him starting to put formae into place, I wasn't totally sure which ones they were, but I felt pretty sure that they were of a level I wouldn't be doing for a few more years yet. 

"Gavra Trolhoulland," he said loudly. "I am arresting you for the theft historical artefacts from the Greenwich Antiquarian collection and for the murder of Andrew Sholto. You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say..."

Nightingale stopped as Trolhoulland flung a ball of what looked like shimmering blue fire at him. He raised his hand and the fireball died instantly. "I would not suggest doing that again."

"What are you?" Trolhoulland said, staring at us with eyes that were just too large and shiny to be human. 

"A senior officer of Her Majesty's police force and perhaps more pertinent to this discussion Master of the Folly." Nightingale continued to walk forwards. "Now I suggest that you cooperate and start to safely discharge your magic." 

"Human things," Trolhoulland said dismissively. "They have no power over me, they have no right in this land. You cannot stop me, all is in motion now. Yes. Yes. All in motion. The land will fall and all will be washed from it." He raised the stolen stones high above his head. "The Trow nation will rise. It will ascend to its rightful place as kings of the north, chasing all before it." 

Okay, so much for the idea that we might be able to talk to him in any rational fashion, Trolhoulland had apparently lost it big time. I don't know much as Trows, and until a couple of days ago I didn't even know that they existed, but I generally had a fair good handle on why people did what they did. Lesley being the exception of course. What I did know was when somebody was this into their own delusions you weren't going to listen to you. When it was just an ordinary person you were generally more concerned for their own safet and whether when they came to their sense they might try and sue you, here with enough magic to make the Northern Lights take a detour, I was more worried about us. 

Sandy, who had apparently decided that the safest place to be was right next to Nightingale, looked around and said, "What people? Why are there no other sea trows here?" 

It was a damn good question and one to which I hoped the answer wasn't armed with something big and point and standing right behind us. I looked round, but couldn't see anyone else. There was no point trying to sense if anybody was doing anything magic nearby, the stuff that Trolhoulland was doing was drowning out anything that might have been background to the site. 

"They will come," Trolhoulland said with absolute certainty. He lowered one of his hands and the ground beneath him started to rise up until it was level with the low roof of the block house and he was silhouetted against the weirdly glowing sky. "When they see our world returning they will come from the shadows and the depths, they will return to the world and I will lead them and they will make me their king." 

"What do we do now?" I asked as I saw Nightingale's tighten his grip on his staff.

"We stop him," he replied. There was a certainty there that made me feel like we'd half won the fight already. "And we do it before he finishes his spell. He is tapping into the land, drawing energy from it, moving and destabilising it. I believe he intends to sink a portion of the island into the sea."

"But that's crazy," Sandy said, staring at Trolhoulland in horror. "People could die. We've got to stop him."

And the prize for understatement of the day goes to DC Sandy Wilson, I thought. The indignant tone would have been rather fun if the situation hadn't been so serious. 

"Quite," Nightingale said, a sharp edge to his voice. "I will admit that I'm not entirely familiar with the methods that he is using, but believe I can prevent him without any untoward effects. Trolhoulland can't move from the circle he has constructed as he's acting as a conduit for the energy." He looked at me, deadly serious. "I should not need to tell you how vitally important that nobody breaks my concentration while I counter him."

I nodded and then said, "What if he throws another fireball at you." 

"He won't," Nightingale replied with certainty. "Didn't you feel how the web of formae he'd constructed faltered before? What he is doing is in a far more critical stage now. He cannot change focus now without risking losing control of it all. This does not leave us free of danger. He made have prepared for this and I will not be able to aid you or Sandy until Trolhoulland's magic had been neutralised." He looked around. "I do not know what else he may have brought here, so remain alert." 

He walked away from us, stopping when he reached the edge of the candle-lit circle. He nodded at Trolhoulland and then lowered his staff so that the end of it was pressed into the soft ground. Trolhoulland didn't look happy, but he hadn't quite descended into the cackling 'you can't stop me now puny human' kind of villain yet, although that was probably only because all his concentration was on making sure his spells held, rather than coming up with witty comments. 

"What should we do?" Sandy said looking at me.

It was a good question, especially as I had no idea what Sandy would be able to do if things started to go wrong. Apart from get the hell out of there that is. I didn't tell him that. Instead I nodded towards the blockhouse. "You cover that side, I'll take the other. If Trolhoulland tries something one of us will see it." 

A moment after we got into position, Hjalda who I was sure hadn't been in the car, hurried past Sandy, directing about a dozen or so trowies to take up positions around the edges block house, presumably to prevent Trolhoulland from leaving. Not that it looked like he'd got any plans to, he seemed more than happy where he was making his magical light show. 

As magical fights went it wasn't all that interesting to watch, and it was nothing like the battle between Nightingale and Varvara at the farm when he'd come to get me and Lesley. The level of energy was higher, I could feel it crackling across my skin like static electricity and I wondered whether having my phone switched off would be enough to save it. 

Nightingale was concentrating on something so spectaularly high level there I wondered if I'd ever be ready to do something like that myself. Even with the extra energy stored in the staff I could see the sweat beading on his forehead. 

I was so busy watching Trolhoulland that it wasn't until one of the rocks on the opposite side of the blockhouse house started to move that I realised things weren't going as smoothly as I'd thought. Any hope that it was just a loose stone or two tumbling from where they'd been piled died a very quick death as it uncurled itself and turned into what most people would call a troll. A proper eight foot tall lump of moving rock who would have been totally at home in Discworld or Middle Earth. It made a rumbling noise that was low enough that you felt it rather than heard it, like bass beat in a night club. It turned to look at Nightingale with deep-set glowing ember-like eyes and then began to lumber forwards. 

Assuming we were all okay at the end of it I suspected that I was going to get a talking to about keeping my mind on the job. If we were I was quite happy to take it. Not that it was my fault exactly, but I was supposed to be watching out for him and stopping anything from getting through. The problem I currently had was that Nightingale was between me and the troll and throwing formae over his head would be a pretty big distraction, maybe not as much as being hit by a tonne of bad tempered granite, but distracting all the same. And that was assuming that the additional magic zipping past didn't interfere with all the rest that was all but crackling about us. There was no way I could risk it, so I ran like hell trying to get a clear shot. 

Sandy was closer and he stared at the troll, fear clear on his face in the flickering candlelight. He glanced at Nightingale, then picked up a stick and executed a move that I could only call bloody brave and incredibly stupid as he got between the troll and Nightingale. For a moment I wondered if maybe he'd lied to us about him not having any magic and he was about to do something amazing. Unfortunately for him the answer was no. The rock troll swung it knobbly arm and caught him a glancing blow. It was probably just as well as it was, because it still had enough force to knock him off his feet and send him flying backwards against the side of the blockhouse. 

Whether Trowies were more fond of him than they had seemed or if they'd been waiting for it to be distracted I didn't know, but they charged towards it from where they had been hidden amongst the heaps of stone. I'd got a better angle by now so I threw my goto spell for slowing down things that I really didn't want reaching me, and couple skinny grenades hit it squarely in the chest. It staggered and then turned its attention towards me.

It wasn't exactly the desired effect, but I decided it would have to do. It rumbled at me, beat on its chest with huge, rocky fists and rushed at me. The Trowies had reached it by now and were swarming up it like mini-King Kongs on very rocky Empire State Building. The troll didn't seem to like it one bit and it roared and flailed around trying to dislodge them. 

As the last of the Trowies scrambled clear light started to appear in all its joints, followed rapidly by cracks forming across its chest and back. It roared again and the cracks widened. What happened next was mostly a blur. There was a rush of stored magical energy escaping in a way that had become scarily familiar of late and the giant troll seemed to implode and explode at the same time as it folded in on itself and then all its rocks flew outwards, a few smashing into the ground around me. The ground then decided it was going to get in on the act and it shook and rumbled in what I imagined an earthquake would feel like. 

Staying on my feet wasn't happening, so I dropped to the ground and hoped that nothing would fall on me and that Shetland wasn't about to sink. It went on for what felt like a good few minutes, although I suspected if I'd had a watch on it would have shown it to be only seconds. Shetland wasn't now at the bottom of the North Sea, reasonably optimistic about how things had gone so I stood up and 

Nightingale was on his knees at the edge of the circle, breathing raggedly, his staff pushed into the ground in front of him like it was all that was keeping him from falling over. I took a step towards him, but he waved me away saying , "Find Trolhoulland."

I looked around to see Sandy getting unsteadily to his feet. I couldn't tell how much damage the troll had done, but I hoped the fact that he was alive and mobile meant that it was minimal. There wasn't time to ask him as Trolhoulland, finding that his frankly crazy plan of sinking part of Shetland and turning it into the kingdom of the sea trows had failed, decided to leg it back down the path that lead to the road. 

I wasn't sure what I'd actually be able to do if I caught him, but there was no way I was just going to let him escape. So I yelled, "Stop, police!" and then gave chase. Luckily for me Trolhoulland didn't seem to be anywhere near as fast as he'd been on the day he'd given us the slip at Griminsta and I suspected that he'd not got the magic left spare do it. Either that or he didn't want to lose me and I was running into a trap. 

Which ever it was the chase didn't last long as shortly after we'd crossed the narrowest part of the route that lead back to the road, Trolhoulland seemed to get that he wasn't going to be able to shake me and turned back to face me. "You have ruined everything!" Trolhoulland shouted at me. "A lifetimes work destroyed and for what?" 

"You would have killed thousands," Nightingale said, arriving beside me. He sounded decidedly wheezy after having run after me, and I hoped that Trolhoulland wouldn't make another dash for it as was I was pretty sure he'd not keep up. 

"Humans. You number billions, you have spread to the furthest corner of the world and yet you would deny us even a corner."

"I have no quarrel with you or your kind living in this world," Nightingale said slowly moving forwards towards him. "Many races survive side by side with out conflict." 

"In secret. In fear of discovery," Trolhoulland spat back at him. "That is less than a life. Better death than such a fate."

"What about the Trowies?" I said, moving round so that Nightingale and me now effectively had him cornered on the cliff top. "This is their land too. Would you have drown them as well?" 

"Degenerates, scraping a living in dark, muddy holes on the edge of land that was once our own," Trolhoulland said dismissively. "They are a dying race, I was doing the kindest thing. They chose to hide from the glory of death in battle, choosing instead wither and fade while dreaming of the past." 

"There is no glory in war," Nightingale said angry and weary at the same time. "There is no such thing as a good death. Your race if it still exists wants no part of this. If they did they would be here." 

"Lies!" Trolhoulland waved his arm in front of himself and a wall of flame shot out towards me and Nightingale. 

I managed to get a shield over myself as the fire raced over me. It was hot, like standing by an open oven door, but as long as it held I'd live. Nightingale countered whatever magic the flame had been created with with a wave of his hand and the fire fizzled and died in front of him. 

"Leave him be!" Nightingale shouted, raising his staff across himself, ready to combat whatever was about to be thrown at him. "You wish for a death you consider glorious then face me." It would have all been very cinematic if he'd not suddenly been caught by a bout of coughing that nearly doubled him over. 

Glory apparently didn't include fighting fair and Trolhoulland seized the moment to use some other magic, not formae as I understood it to pull Nightingale's staff from his hand. A split second later he was lifted high off the ground. Still coughing, he struggled to breathe as he pulled at something unseen around his throat. He hung suspended for a moment, then with a wave of his hand Trolhoulland hurled Nightingale backwards and he disappeared over the cliff.

The flames racing over me faltered and died and I dropped my shield and ran to the edge and looked down. Not the brightest of moves leaving a power crazy troll behind me, but all I could think of was Nightingale. It couldn't be the end, not like this. The eerie, magically induced Northern Lights were starting to fade as the magic dissipated, but there was just enough light for me to see the waves crashing over the rocks below. I tried not to think about drowning statistics for falling from heights or into freezing water or whether Nightingale could actually swim. 

"And what are you?" Trolhoulland said moving towards me. "His servant? It doesn't matter, you shall join him." 

"I'm his friend," I said getting to my feet, and forcing myself to look away from the white-water crashing against the rocks. Whether it was because Trolhoulland was worn out from all the magic he'd used earlier, if it was because he was less powerful than Faceless or whether it was because I threw everything I had it to making the formae I didn't know. What I did know was that hurling stones at him using the same combination I'd used to lob a chimney at London's least wanted worked. Trolhoulland gave a yell of surprise as about two dozen rocks ranging from about the size of a grape up to a football slammed into him and he fell backwards off the cliff and into the sea.

I had no idea whether I'd hurt him or worse, but it wasn't him I was trying to find as I looked back down over the edge of the cliff. There was nothing but the sight and sound of the sea battering the cliffs and I dropped to my knees. It couldn't end like this, it wasn't right, it wasn't fair. I couldn’t do this on my own, I wasn’t ready to take on half the things we’d faced by myself, not if I want to survive the encounter. I'd been lucky so far, stupidly, ridiculously lucky to walk away with nothing more than bruises and enough nightmare fuel to last a lifetime. 

A flicker of light flared into life just above the waves. It solidified into a strong, steady glow of a werelight which was lighting the way of a distant figure fighting their way towards the shore. It was too far away to get a sense of the signare, but I would have known it anywhere. Stopping only to grab his staff from where it had fallen, I wasted no time in running down to where Nightingale would hopefully come ashore. My jeans and boots were soaked through as soon as I got into the freezing, knee deep water, the waves breaking against my legs. It was all worth it as he stumbled forwards, alive and apparently mostly unharmed, and caught hold of my arms, nearly falling against me. 

"Rather too bracing at this time of year, don't you think?" Nightingale said, trying to sound unconcerned about having been picked up and flung into the sea and not being even remotely successful. He was shivering and his teeth were chattering as he added, "I really can't recommend...Peter, get down!"

He suddenly let go of my arms and then shoved me backwards into the knee-deep water. I went under for a moment and the cold nearly took my breath away. Spluttering, I sat up and second later a fireball shot over my head, to be blocked by a shield that Nightingale had thrown over us. The flames barely had time to fade before he dropped the shield and his own answering fireball raced off past me. It had taken just a few seconds and I splashed around to see Trolhoulland engulfed in flames, the light from them lighting up the jagged rocks just off shore that he was standing on. He beat at the flames with his hands for a moment and then, with a scream, he toppled back and was lost in the crashing waves.

Nightingale held out a hand to me to try and help me to my feet. The result was however that fell forward on top of me and we both floundered about for a bit, before we managed to somehow drag each other upright again. 

I'm not the most demonstrative of people, and there is the whole thing of men don't hug unless they are part of the team who has just won the World Cup or some other major sporting event and even then it should be over as quickly as possible, but having Nightingale alive was better than any trophy as far as I was concerned. So I felt totally justified in wrapping my arms around him and holding on until I was sure he was actually really there. 

"Are you hurt?" he asked sounding scarily something close afraid, which made me feel about a million times worse. 

I shook my head. The whole adrenaline rush of the fight and the chase seemed to have suddenly vanished and my body informed me that it had had just about enough. Feeling incredibly cold, tired and shivery I put my head against his shoulder and tried not to do anything stupid like fall over or cry.

"Peter?" 

Talking wasn't high on my list of things to do, but I couldn't ignore him. I wanted to tell him I was just cold, but apparently my brain had other ideas and I said, "I thought he'd killed..."

"There is a third level formae is very useful in slowing a fall. I really should teach it to you," Nightingale said interrupting me. He had also apparently decided that the one sided hug had gone on long enough and put an arm around me, holding me tight. "I know it isn't easy, but I suggest that you try not allow yourself to dwell tonight's events." 

I knew that I would. I knew that he knew that I would, but I nodded anyway, safe in the knowledge that he wouldn't mention it again unless I did first. And that was it, we could have died, but we didn't and now we'd go on like nothing had happened, because neither of us knew how to do anything else. I wasn't sure if that made us heroes or fools. Maybe it was just being human in a world that made sod all sense even at the best of times. 

"We need to find Sandy and make the call to Perez," Nightingale said, when I'd not replied or made a move to get out the sea which was still sloshing icily about our ankles. 

I nodded again, wondering how Nightingale could still sound so in control despite nearly having drown. Did it come naturally with age or did it really not bother him like other people? Whatever it was it didn't stop him from feeling the cold or from limping as we made our way slowly up the beach. He kept him arm around me as we walked although whether it was for my benefit or his I had no idea. Either way I was grateful that he did, as the wind seemed to cut right through my soaking clothes, my supposedly waterproof jacket not up to the challenge of being dunked in the sea. "What are we going to say?" I said, trying to find something to think about that wasn't freezing or dying. 

Nightingale stopped for a moment and looked down the beach to a small boat shed a little way down the coast. Then he sent a not inconsiderable sized fireball down to it where it promptly exploded. "There was boating accident. Fuel can be highly flammable when incorrectly stored. We couldn't save him or recover the stolen objects. I believe that covers it."

I was too cold and tired to summon anything more than a brief bit of concern for whoever had owned the shed, and hoped that their insurance company would pay out for anything that was damaged. Later I thought I might have some reservations about how easy Nightingale found it to falsify evidence, but at that moment I just wanted to get somewhere warm and sleep for week or two. 

Sandy had managed to follow us part of the way and was sitting hunched over in the minimal shelter afforded by the remains of an old, ruined cottage. He struggled to his feet as he saw us, his left arm cradled awkwardly with his right. "Did we win?" he asked, voice raw with pain. 

"We did," Nightingale said, indicating that he should probably sit down before he fell down. “Which is in no small part down to your prompt actions earlier. I believe I owe you my life.”

"We didn't have a chance without you, I could see that," Sandy said, then groaned and held his arm tighter. "Is it really over?" 

"As much as police work ever is," Nightingale said sinking to his knees beside Sandy. "Peter, could you give me a little light?"

Maybe it was so I had something to occupy me and he thought I needed the distraction or maybe he didn't want to try any more magic for a while give the ridiculous amounts he'd be throwing about in the last couple of hours, either way I made a werelight for him and got it float over us.

The light revealed what I'd expected, that none of us were in great shape. Sandy's arm was almost certainly broken and almost certainly had some pretty spectacular bruising from colliding with the blockhouse wall. Nightingale was exhausted, shivering badly and now he was sitting still coughing again. I’d escaped relatively unscathed apart from being wet, cold and slightly bruised from Nightingale landing on top of me. It wasn't the best end to the case that could have happened. Our suspect was dead, we had no real evidence apart from what we had created and we were all a bit battered and bruised, but we were alive and in the end we'd probably all be okay. 

Being a copper and more importantly an apprentice wizard means that you do come prepared for such eventualities and my mobile, which had been switched off to avoid being magically fried had survived its brief dip in the sea. So after switching off the werelight, I made the call to a very surprised sounding PC who’d been covering the front desk at Lerwick Central. With that done we tried to get our stories straight while we waited for help to arrive. 

 

TBC (Epilogue) 

 

Notes.  
The Ness of Burgi is real location at the southern most end of Shetland. It's been a while since I last visited it, but given that it has been there for the best part of 1800 years, I suspect that that it has not changed to much in the last ten or so.

Nearly at the end now. I know I said no more than eight parts, but it really does need an epilogue/final part type thing to tie it together. I'm working on it now and hopefully I'd have in posted later in the week.


	9. Chapter 9

It took four days to tie up loose ends and book our return tickets for the ferry back to Aberdeen. I'd ended up sorting out most of the things that needed doing at the station as Nightingale's cough had returned with something of a vengeance for the first couple of days following our confrontation with Trolhoulland and he'd spent most of that time in bed finally catching up on the rest that he should have allowed himself days ago. I didn't mind doing the paperwork or him taking a break; he'd been thrown about twenty metres into the sea so I was grateful he'd not ended up with something like pneumonia from his impromptu swim.

It hadn't taken long for help to arrive after I'd made the call to the PC at Lerwick Central who'd probably thought up until then he'd got the quietest shift ever. Help had been the police and an ambulance like I said we needed, a fire engine for the boat shed and the search and rescue helicopter, which tried and failed to find any sign of Trolhoulland. I think that was a first for me, having to get the coastguard called out to a case. 

Perez and Tosh had taken charge of the scene, while Sandy and Nightingale had been carted off in an ambulance as soon as the EMTs got a good look at them and Nightingale had admitted he'd ended up in the sea. Not that he’d stayed at the hospital for any length of time. He'd got back to Sea View before I’d finished at the station, having discharged himself claiming being wet and a bit bruised was no reason to take up a doctor’s valuable time. 

We'd talked about it, that is to say I told him it might not have been the best idea in the world and he told me he was fine and to stop worrying. He wasn't, but his definition of fine anything not life threatening. He was cold, tired, bruised from hitting at least a few rocks during his time in the sea and more shaken that he wanted to let on, but eventually I came to the same conclusion that he had. That what he needed most was somewhere warm to rest, and while hospitals tend to be warm, they are about the least restful place ever. 

Part of me did wonder if he'd left early because he'd wanted to make sure that I’d not put my foot in it when I'd given my version of events. I hadn't. I knew the drill by now. Don't make the story too perfect, have a couple of minor difference from your other witnesses because nothing says collusion quite so much as three identical statements where the people shouldn't have all been able to see the same thing, and most importantly don't contradict yourself. 

It helped there wasn't much to contradict myself on. The boat shed had been completely destroyed by Nightingale’s fireball which, if they ever found Trolhoulland's body, would explain why it was burnt rather than drown. Our version of events said that Trolhoulland had accidentally ignited some gas cylinders in the shed while he was trying to escape. The look Perez had given me suggested that he wasn't totally convinced, but it looked better than rampaging trolls and magical sea people on the official report and there was nothing in the physical evidence that contradicted it. Admittedly it didn’t corroborate it either, but then you can’t have everything. 

Nightingale had put it on record the following day, when he went into the station looking and sounding dreadful, that Sandy's injury had been sustained pushing him out of the way when Trolhoulland had surprised him and tried to hit him with metal bar. We had spotted a bar lying on the ground while we'd been thinking of what to say and it sort of fit, so we went with it. 

Perez didn't have that many questions for him and ended taking his statement by telling him to go and rest. And that was it really, you made a story that fit the facts and was more believable than the truth. Which luckily for us included magic, giant trolls, tiny trolls and crazy sea trolls with delusions of empire building so nobody in their right mind would have believed it anyway. 

The biggest problem we had was in explaining why we'd raced off down there by ourselves rather than calling for back up. Sandy had come up with it having been Robbie Leask who'd informed him there was something going on and he'd not logged it in because he'd expected it to turn out to be nothing. It helped that Perez seemed genuinely fond of him and combined with the fact he'd been hurt in the line of duty he hadn't pushed Sandy for anything more. 

I wasn't totally sure that Perez had bought our version of events, but in the end he'd shaken his head and told us he was just glad that it was over and that Trolhoulland wasn't still at large. It was too late to tell the Lerwick Times not to bother running the 'Have you seen this man' story about Trolhoulland. But Lerwick's press savvy Procurator Fiscal, Rhona Kelly, had allowed them to run with the story of the exploding boat shed and that it was linked to Trolhoulland. The newspaper seemed to be happy enough with this and printed a whole load of rubbish implying it had been about international historical artefact smuggling. 

To make sure our version of events all tallied I ended up having to go round to Robbie Leask's house and ask him to say it was him who told us to get down to the Ness of Burgi. He'd not initially been keen on the idea, but I told him that I believed in the Peerie Folk as he called them and that there really was magic in the stones. 

He'd had a complete change of attitude after that, talking enthusiastically about his rocks and how he was going to stop global warming with them if only he could get the right combination. It wasn't remotely believable, although I decided I'd ask Nightingale later just to make sure that Leask wouldn't accidentally cause a freak tornado or something. Eventually I'd had enough so I thanked him for calling Sandy, as he now seemed to believe he really had, and told him that the Trowies, his Peerie Folk, were partial to canned meat. If it was them who'd been moving his rocks maybe leaving a can or two outside occasionally might stop them doing it. That seemed to please him even more than me knowing about the Trowies. 

By the time I left his garden, he'd not asked me in as I might have knocked over more rocks that were piled up inside, I trusted him to tell Perez what I'd asked him to do. Whether he'd get the right day or add bits about trolls and magic rocks I didn't know, but since everybody knew that Robbie was a frequent caller to the police and one who rarely if ever made any sense the lack of detail or coherency was pretty much expected. 

I'd visited Sandy the following day once he'd been discharged from hospital and was back in his flat in Lerwick. He was sore and annoyed that he'd not be able to drive or ride his bike for the next six weeks or so, but generally relieved it was all over. He seemed happier as well and was talking about using his time on sick leave to study for his sergeants exam. 

I don't know what Sandy and Nightingale had said to each other while they were being carted of to Lerwick General or while they'd been waiting to be seen, but whatever it was it seemed to have cleared the air between them and Sandy's previously held idea that Nightingale would destroy his career thankfully never surfaced. 

 

It was a bright, sunny Sunday afternoon just over week after we'd first arrived in Shetland that we finally got ready to leave it. Sandy came down to Victoria Pier to see us off. His arm was in the world ugliest padded blue foam sling and he'd got mottled purple bruising down one side of his face, but he seemed happy other than that. 

"Are you sure you should be up and about?" I said, as he stood shivering slightly in breeze as he'd not been able to fasten his coat due to the sling. 

"There's nothing wrong with me apart from my arm. Both lower bones, but they said it was a clean break and it should heal well." Sandy smiled and then winced as the movement hurt the bruises on his face. "Things could have been a lot worse."

And that was an understatement and a half, but I'd decided not to think too much on how things could have gone. So I nodded and generally looked relieved. 

"The weather is supposed to be good for a few days," Sandy said, looking out across the water. The sea looked like glass, a complete contrast to how it had been when we'd arrived. "Robbie told me he'd arranged his rocks specially for it. I'm not sure I believe it, but after what we've seen who knows." 

"Who indeed," Nightingale said, taking Sandy's uninjured hand and shaking it warmly. "Although I believe that we have heard the last of Trolhoulland you know where we are should any other such situation arise." 

"Yes, although between you and me, I hope this is the last." He frowned. "Not that you're not welcome to come back, I just meant that I'd rather it wasn't because of a case." 

"I know what you mean," I said, taking his hand now Nightingale had let go of it. "And if you're ever down in London, give me a call and I can show you some of the pubs down there. Although I don't think I'll be able to find one quite like the Thule."

Nightingale didn't seem to mind, so I decided that if I'd not heard from Sandy in a few weeks, I'd invite him down next time he had some leave. It would be fun showing him round the place, with me having the local knowledge this time and telling him about it like he'd done in Shetland. Although hopefully the magic side of London would stay safely out of the way while we did.

After saying our goodbyes and putting our luggage in a cabin that looked as much like a converted cupboard as the last one had, we went back up on deck. Standing with Nightingale at the back of the ship, the St Sunniva this time, we leant on the rail and watched as Lerwick got smaller and smaller behind us. 

"What do you think Sandy will do now he knows there's more to magic than his Gran taught him?" I asked him once everybody else seemed to have got bored of watching the view and had gone inside. 

"I don't know," Nightingale replied. "It doesn’t come from the same Newtonian traditions that I'm familiar with. He seems sensible enough not to fool around with something he knows can be deadly. He gave me his word and told me he wouldn't try. Not unless unless people's lives were at risk and then he told me he'd do his job in any way he could and deal with the consequences later. I really couldn't fault him on that."

"So it had nothing to do with him getting between you and the troll?" I said. It probably wasn't the most tactful thing to ask, but I felt the question needed an answer all the same. 

"It had some bearing on it, although I had already come to the same conclusion before that point. He quite possibly saved my life, he certainly prevented the troll from interrupting what I was doing." He turned to look at me rather than the sea. "He believed that I was going to destroy his career and maybe even his life, yet he put the lives of those in Shetland before his own and chose to risk himself to protect me. That convinced me I had come to the right decision." 

"You admire him," I said, feeling a little hurt by it, but not able to figure out why. 

"The ability to to put aside ones feeling to act for the greater good and to do so in a timely manner are admirable qualities." He looked at me, a faint smile on his face. "I doubtlessly haven't said this enough or perhaps at all, but I see the same qualities in you, Peter. And as such I count myself exceedingly fortunate to have you not only as my apprentice, but as a friend." 

It's not that often that I'm lost for words, but right now all I could manage was a rather shocked, "Thank you, sir." 

He smiled properly this time and I could have sworn there was something slightly smug in it, as if he'd known I wouldn't know what to say. I didn't care, things felt better than they had in a long time, like the tension between us following Lesley departure was finally lifting. 

We moved round to side of the St Sunniva after it cleared Lerwick Harbour and the narrow channel of Bressay Sound, to chug slowly down the coast towards the open sea. In the bright afternoon sunshine Shetland looked good, the cliffs and fields green and gold, and nothing like the continuously wet, grey and cold place that it had been for just about all our stay. 

"We should have sent Molly a postcard or something," I said, feeling guilty that she must be wondering where we'd got to by now. I should probably have sent one to my mum and dad as well. Maybe I could get one in Aberdeen and blame its late arrival on Royal Mail. 

"I called Molly each evening, she would worry dreadfully otherwise," he said, "I've told her to expect us for dinner tomorrow evening. I think she was relieved to know we were soon to be home."

I was tempted to ask how he knew Molly had answered the call as she never spoke, but her silences were more than just the absence of words and I suspected that even over the phone it was noticeable. 

"I had a call from Frank Caffrey this morning," Nightingale said, before I could ask whether we were going to get to work as soon as we got back to London.

"How?" I asked, knowing that Nightingale didn't have a mobile and wondering just how serious it would have to be for Frank to track down where we were. If there was something that wasn't bothered by phosphorus grenades I wasn't sure I was in any hurry to meet it.

"I gave him, Seawoll, Stephanopolous and Dr Walid the telephone number for Sea View," Nightingale replied, like it was the most obvious thing in the world to have done. "We could hardly remain out of contact for days at a time." 

"It wasn't anything serious, was it?" 

"A mostly average haunting. Frank cleared out a small nest of vampires at an old country house in Essex earlier in the week, and apparently annoyed the resident and previously undocumented ghost in the process." Nightingale smiled faintly. "I said we'd take a look when we got a chance. Perhaps next weekend if you have no prior plans." 

"Off the books?" I said, seeing the chance of a day off any time soon disappearing into the distance. 

He nodded. "Unless something else presents itself in relation to the case."

Considering where saying I'd got no plans for the weekend had taken me last time I thought about claiming that I couldn't as it was a friend's birthday and we'd made plans months ago. But when it came down to the idea of checking out a proper haunted house won hands down. So I told him the truth, he told me a bit about haunted houses and we both watched Shetland and its strange magic disappear over the horizon. 

 

The End.

 

A/N

So that's it, for now at least, although possibly if I get an idea for it I might have Sandy visiting them in London or write something about the disgruntled ghost.

**Author's Note:**

> The St Clair and its channel ferry origins are true. I've been a passenger heading to Shetland as an archaeologist on it a couple of times. (As well as on the other ship that sails the Aberdeen to Lerwick route, the St Sunniva.)
> 
> It has been a few years since I last went up there so apologies if they have finally decommissioned them. The off-white plastic rooms and bed seltbelts are also true. I only got a cabin once. the next time i took a sleeping bag as hand luggage and slept on the floor of the ships bar as a good number of the other passengers did. There was talk of a proper ferry terminal being built in Lerwick as opposed to the ships docking at Victoria Quay as they do in this story and did when I last visited there. 
> 
> Fortunately for me the weather was never as bad at Peter and Nightingale experienced it. The storm Sandy mentions where the 12 hour trip took 40 is from a real news story.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover for "Northern Lights"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2814464) by [Makoyi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Makoyi/pseuds/Makoyi)




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